Course overview

Cinema was the dominant international medium of mass visual culture for the first half of the twentieth century. Our histories of that period have been profoundly influenced by film. The movies became not only a habitual part of the lives of millions, but spawned some remarkable creative innovation.

Since then, film has enjoyed a new lease of life as one of a range of global media leisure pursuits, enjoyed and celebrated in different kinds of spaces: in the cinema, at home on TV, video and DVD, and now via the internet. It remains a popular entertainment, yet is also an experimental art form viewed in galleries. Cinema is now widely studied and written about in a variety of guises: by film fans in weblogs, by journalists and critics in the media, and by teachers and students across the education system.

The BA (Hons) Film Studies is an exciting and innovative course offering you the opportunity to study critical and theoretical approaches to a wide range of films. You will also have the opportunity to take practical units in production, using the latest digital video technology, and to develop skills in screenwriting.

This course allows you to explore a number of key moments in the history of Hollywood, European and non-Western film-making, looking critically at the changing nature of the international film industry and film audiences in Britain and around the world.

Course content

The BA (Hons) Film Studies course allows you to study the history of film as mass entertainment. You will consider its pioneers and innovators, its production regimes and audience markets. You will explore cinema's changing roles in shaping and expressing national identities and cultures, employing a range of critical approaches to reading film texts. You will also debate the dynamic relationship between film theory and video production as film practice. You will study an exciting range of units throughout your studies. Some are core units which must be studied and some are specialised units which you choose.

Year one

You will study a range of topics including:

• Studying Film
• Screening Europe
• Spectacular Hollywood
• Audio Vision
• Intro to Film Research
• Authorship

Year two

You will study three core units:

• Adaptations
• World and Transnational Cinema
• Critical Hollywood

You will also choose three options from:

• Costuming the Screen
• Documentary
• British Cinema 1930s–1970
• Screen Media
• Electives
• Production Introduction

Year three

In your final year you will complete a dissertation or practical video project, as well as five options from the following:

• Celebrity Culture
• Gender and Sexuality
• Black American
• Fandom
• Comedy, Culture and Form
• Film Journalism
• Marketing Movies
• Researching Animation

Teaching and assessment

Film students at Portsmouth experience considerable intellectual freedom and choice. The specialist options are built into the programme to enable a great degree of personal exploration. The dissertation in Year three (which is worth a third of the total mark during the final year) is based on a topic that you select.

Our teaching approach involves lectures, seminars, tutorials, practical performance and workshop sessions. You will be expected to participate fully in stimulating group discussions and projects. You will also be encouraged to make effective use of information from a wide variety of sources, including books and journals, videos and DVDs, CD-ROMs and websites.

Assessment takes many forms in film studies and includes essays, video productions, film scripts, group presentations, exams, reports or a research portfolio. Overall, we have sought to develop a variety of assessments that allow you to demonstrate a range of skills and talents.

Career prospects

You'll gain the academic, intellectual and research skills of several disciplines, which will enable you to become multi-skilled in ways that employers are now demanding.

Specifically, the Film Studies degree programme promotes the following transferrable key skills which are appropriate to a wide range of career paths:

Gathering, organising and deploying ideas and information in order to formulate arguments cogently, and express them effectively in written, oral or other forms; retrieving and generating information, and evaluating sources in carrying out independent research; working independently, demonstrating initiative, self-organisation and time-management skills; working productively in a group or team, contribute to group discussions and make effective oral presentations; delivering work to an appropriate length, format, brief and deadline, properly referencing sources and ideas, deploying a range of IT skills from basic competencies such as data analysis and word-processing to more complex skills use web-based technology or multimedia.

The BA (Hons) Film Studies course will prepare you to apply for jobs in areas such as publishing, journalism, film and media production and management, research, scriptwriting, and local and community broadcasting. Many graduates also continue on to do postgraduate study.  Some of our alumni are now pursuing careers in the following fields:

• Film marketing and PR
• Programming
• IT
• Teaching
• Academia
• Research
• Filmmaking
• Enterprise
• Cross Platform Media Production (internet, mobile phones, promotion)

Quotes from former students:

'I went onto study Acting for Stage, Screen and Radio at drama school. I am now a professional actor living in London and I have worked for BBC Radio 4 as well as stage tours in Wales and Ireland.'

'Since graduating, I have gone on to work for one of the UK's largest film PR agencies, where I worked on several films for Warner Bros and Universal Pictures International. I now work as a publicist for one of the UK's leading independent film distributors of art-house and world cinema titles. Studying Film at Portsmouth gave me a great introduction to world cinema and film theory, all of which are directly applicable to what I do.'

Facilities and features

All teaching and learning spaces are equipped with audio-visual and network PC facilities, making the showing of moving image extracts a key feature of most multimedia lectures. Increasing use is made of Moodle, our Virtual Learning Environment, with streamed resources downloaded from Box of Broadcasts (BoB). Students are able to make their own clips for use in PowerPoint presentations.

Academic researchers in the School of Creative Arts, Film and Media have a range of industry contacts and hold seminars and lectures with industry-based alumni and media professionals.

You will have access to our dedicated Learning Resource Centre which houses over 7,000 DVDs and videos, allowing you to broaden your experience of film as you study.

Entry requirements

View all the entry requirements for BA (Hons) Film Studies for the academic year 2013/14 (opens in new window).