The module will be delivered via an integrated series of lectures, screenings, seminars and key readings.
Lectures will provide an overview of key theoretical debates and considerations and will be interspersed with a screening programme based on case study texts for both the unit on authorship and the unit on genre.
Seminars will provide an opportunity to expand upon and apply key concepts introduced during the lectures and readings through a programme of student led activities that will additionally be used for formative assessment.

First Essay 1000 word Auteur Study of a director of student's choice 50%
Second Essay 1000 word Genre Study of student's choice 50%

[Learning Outcome 1, 2, 3, 4]

Altman, R., Film Genre (BFI, 1999)
Barthes, R., `The Death of the Author' (1968), in in Image, Music, Text, ed. S. Heath, (Fontana, 1977)
Caughie, J. (ed.), Theories of Authorship, (BFI, 1981)
Foucault, M., `What is an Author?', in P. Rabinowitz (ed.), The Foucault Reader, (Penguin, 1981)
Hillier, J. (ed.), Cahiers du Cinema, 1: the 1950s, neo-realism, Hollywood, the New Wave, (Routledge, 1985)
Hillier, J & Wollen, P (eds.), Howard Hawks: An American Artist (BFI, 1996)
Krutnik, F., In a Lonely Street: Film Noir Genre Masculinity (Routledge, 1991)
Mercer, J & Shingler, S., Melodrama: Genre, Style, Sensibility (Wallflower, 2004)
Neale, S., Genres in Contemporary Hollywood (Routledge, 2000)
Neale, S., (ed.) Genre and Contemporary Hollywood (BFI, 2002)
Sarris, A., The American Cinema (Dutton, 1968)
Schatz, T., Hollywood Genres (Temple, 1981)
Wollen, P., Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (BFI, 1997)

Screening facilities for lectures and screenings
Televisions videos and DVDs in seminar rooms.
Video/ DVD library.

The two most common pre-theoretical ways new students approach film are either through an interest in the work of a particular director, or a particular type of film. This module is designed to introduce students to theoretical ways of developing these approaches through an introduction to the concepts of authorship, auteur theory and genre theory. Through the adoption of this approach students will begin to be able to place their specific interests in a wider theoretical context that maps onto the trajectory of Film Studies as a discipline. In this way this core module for Film Studies and FTVRS students will build upon work undertaken in the core Film Studies modules in semester one focussing on cinematic history and industrial context by charting the history of Film Studies as a field of academic enquiry and thereby preparing them for a more thoroughgoing engagement with film theory at Level 2.

Unit 1 of the module will focus on the emergence of film criticism and theory through the study of authorship in the work of Andrew Sarris and the development of the `politique des auteurs' espoused by the critics of Cahiers du Cinema. After providing a theoretical context module delivery will concentrate on conceptual application through an investigation of case study Auteurs. It is envisaged that each of the case studies should be chosen as examples of Sarris' pantheon (e.g. Ford, Welles, Hitchcock) directors championed by the Cahiers du Cinema critics (e.g. Ray, Sirk, Kazan) and contemporary Auteurs (e.g. Fincher, Burton, Almodovar.)

Unit 2 will concentrate on the consolidation of serious film criticism and the emergence of Film Studies as an academic discipline through an investigation of Genre Study. This will facilitate a comparison and contrast between the dominant auteurist approaches to cinema during the late 1960s and early 1970s and the newer concerns of ideology criticism and emerging interests in questions of representation, gender, sexuality and reception during the mid 1970s and onwards. Theoretical context and debates will once again be applied through an analysis of key genres that illustrate debate within the discipline (for example, early genre studies: Gangster Films and Westerns, questions of genre in Film Noir, questions of gender in Romantic Comedy, questions of sexuality and identity in Horror.)