Introduction to Film Studies

The course proceeds from an awareness of the complexity of film as an artistic as well as economic, cultural and social phenomenon. Hence, its starting point is an assortment of specialised literature that will offer the students an insight into this multifacetedness of the medium and into the diversity of the key approaches of film scholarship.
Interlinking historical circumstances, industrial politics, authorial engagement and artistic shifts, the course traces the evolution of film from its beginnings to the present day. Hence, necessarily, the lectures draw on philosophy and psychology of art, the bases of film aesthetics and contemporary sociological analyses of post-industrial society.
The lectures and seminars supplement the confrontation with various theoretical possibilities of approaching film as a complex system of circulation of products, goods, ideas, labour and capital with analyses of specific films.