Video showing facilities, library.

The module will on alternate weeks consist of a whole group film screening (approximately 2 contact hours) followed by a one-hour seminar group discussion, generally tutor-led. Additional sessions at the end of the semester will be scheduled to help students prepare and plan their assessment.

This module will seek to introduce classic themes in philosophy such as the nature of time, of personal identity, of reality, or of the reliability of sensible experience. It will do so by discussing the portrayal and development of these themes that is implicit with a series of films. Appropriate films might include: Memento, Smoke, Lost Highway, The Truman Show, etc. In addition, the opportunity will also be taken up to discuss the manner in which philosophical ideas can be raised and developed through means other than conventional philosophical prose: e.g. through the construction of narrative, character, scene, voice, point-of-view, etc.

Film-Philosophy, Internet Journal.
Allen and Smith, eds. Film Theory and Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
Freeland and Wartenberg, eds. Film and Philosophy, Routledge, 1995.
Irving Singer, Reality Transformed: Film as Meaning and Technique, MIT, 2000.
Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979.
Carroll, Theorizing The Moving Image, Cambridge UP, 1996.

The essay will comprise an analysis of the philosophical ideas in, one of the contrasting ways they are instroduced and developed in, two films of the student's choice. The essay will provide evidence of all the above learning outcomes