MA Film Curating
The MA Film Curating, offered for the first time in October 2010, is a collaboration between the London Consortium (University of London) and the London Film School which aims to provide students with a historical, theoretical and practical overview of the subject. Bringing together recent thinking about curating contemporary art with the constantly evolving world of film, film festivals and the movie business, it offers a theoretical exploration into the role of film curating in an age in which digital distribution technologies are transforming both the traditional notion of curating and the commercial film distribution sector. The consideration of contemporary festival culture is central to this MA and a key attraction of the programme is the privileged access that students have to established film festivals (Cannes and Rotterdam in 2010-11). Attendance at at least two festivals is included in the fee and access is encouraged to a number of other events. At the end of the year, each student curates a film-related event of his or her own devising, drawing on the combined resources and expertise of the London Film School and the constituent institutions of the London Consortium.
Aims
In recent years there has been a steady increase in the prominence of curating, both as a concept and as a career path. At the same time, moving image formats have undergone a rapid process of diffusion and diversification, and the different kinds of venue for viewing film have multiplied. For much the same reason, the number of film festivals worldwide has (at least) doubled in the past 20 years and continues to grow. This innovative new degree will look at all the aspects of film programming and presentation, in the context of film festivals as well as the institutional and commercial sectors. The institutional partnerships of the London Consortium (in particular the involvement of Tate, the Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Science Museum), make it an ideal context for students who occupy curatorial positions or wish to have careers in this area. This new collaboration with the London Film School addresses the need for a specific training and the investigation of a career path in film curating.
Film Curating
Film curating is similar to more traditional forms of curating: it involves the selection, organisation and exhibition of artefacts in a particular context. However, film is distinguished from other art forms in that it can rarely be separated from its industrial or commercial context. The MA Film Curating will focus on the most common point of contact between the cinemagoer or film researcher on the one hand, and between film culture and the film industry on the other: that is, the specialised curation of film festivals, film events and the programming of seasons at various institutions. The changes currently taking place within the commercial film distribution sector as a result of shifting economic paradigms and, more particularly, technological developments, suggest that, in the very near future, curatorial skills will be as relevant to those working outside the institutional sector as those working within it. Traditional methods of film distribution are being replaced by those mandated by digital technology, which means that film programming is likely to become a far more sophisticated and intellectually challenging activity than the kind of work done by the film ‘buyers’ of the traditional cinema chains. Film festivals will likewise not be immune to these changes. The MA Film Curating seeks to make students aware of these changes and to develop skills backed up by a fund of knowledge that will enable them to operate effectively in either sector.
Structure
Students follow one core course provided by the London Film School for all LFS students (Director Strategies) and one existing course at the London Consortium (Research Skills and Methods). Alongside these run two courses unique to the MA Film Curating: one devoted to the development of industrial models of film distribution and modern festival programming through a two-term core course on Production/Distribution/Exhibition; and one examining the current situation with regard to curatorial practice in the art world (Curating Theory and Practice). Students also gain practical experience of curating, both within the context of existing institutions, and through the practical curation of a film or film/related event. Assessment is by means of two essays and a final curated project. There are also numerous practical exercises and seminars, and one ‘virtual’ project to be curated purely as a learning exercise during the Spring Term.
Courses
Film History and Film Style followed by Production Distribution Exhibition
The course introduces students to the history of the film industry and its contemporary structure, particularly the changes it is currently undergoing, as seen from the point of view of film as product.
Topics covered over the two terms include: the development of ‘Hollywood’ as a distribution mechanism over the past century; the ways in which outside factors - technological, economic, social - have changed Hollywood’s distribution strategies; the subsequent emergence of a less obviously commercial sector, often referred to as ‘arthouse’; the history and practice of distribution outside what Hollywood calls the ‘domestic’ market (ie. North America); the role of film festivals as cultural events, commercial shopwindows, tourist magnets and networking opportunities; and, finally, the effect of the internet on the whole process of film distribution. As part of the course, each student will be expected to research and introduce at least one of the films shown.
Autumn Term 2011: Film History and Film Style
1 21.09 Introduction Singin’ in the Rain
2 28.09 Nickelodeon to Picture Palace Early shorts/Freaks
3 05.10 Silent Hollywood Orphans of the Storm
4 12.10 The Coming of Sound 42nd Street
5 19.10 The Studio System The Adventures of Robin Hood
[6 26.10 Ben’s turnaround course]
7 02.11 The Paramount Decrees The Reckless Moment
8 09.11 The Coming of TV From Here to Eternity
9 16.11 The College Circuit Easy Rider
10 23.11 B is for Blockbuster Jaws
11 30.11 F is for Franchise The Terminator
12 07.12 S is for Sundance sex, lies & videotape
Spring Term 2012: Production Distribution Exhibition
1 11.01 Sample territory: France A bout de souffle
2 18.01 Sample territory: Germany Im Lauf der Zeit
3 25.01 Sample territory: Italy La dolce vita
4 01.02 Rotterdam]
5 08.02 Arthouse: Exoticism Russian Ark
6 15.02 Arthouse: Discovery La mujer sin cabeza
7 22.02 Festivals: Celebrations of film 4 luni, 3 septamani si 2 zile
8 29.02 Festivals: Meetings & markets Lost in Translation
9 07.03 Schlock and Exploitation The Toxic Avenger
10 14.03 Film distribution and the internet Rage
Core reading for both Autumn and Spring Terms
André Bazin, What Is Cinema?, Vols 1 and 2, University of California Press, 2004*
Dudley Andrew (ed), Opening Bazin: Postwar Film Theory and its Afterlife, OUP, 2011
Peter Wollen, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, BFI, 1997
* students with good enough French are strongly recommended to read the original four-volume Qu’est-ce que le cinéma published in 1979 by Editions du Cerf
Tino Balio (ed), The American Film Industry, University of Wisconsin Press, 1976
Tino Balio, Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939, University of California Press, 1993
Douglas Gomery, The Hollywood Studio System: A History, University of California Press, 2007
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Films We Can See, Wallflower Press, 2000
Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era, Simon & Schuster, 1989
Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America, Random House, 1994
Published screenplays
42nd Street, ed. Rocco Fumento, Warner Bros. Screenplay Series, University of Wisconsin Press, 1980
The Adventures of Robin Hood, ed. Rudy Behlmer, Warner Bros. Screenplay Series, University of Wisconsin Press, 1979
Sex, Lies & Videotape, Faber & Faber, 2000
Singin’ in the Rain, The MGM Library of Film Scripts, Viking Press, 1972
bfi Classics/Modern Classics
Leo Hill, Easy Rider, 1996
J. Hoberman, 42nd Street, 1993
Antonia Quirke, Jaws, 2002
Michael Paul Rogen, Independence Day, 1998
Peter Wollen, Singin’ in the Rain, 1992
Useful background reading
1. Autumn Term
Lutz Bacher, Max Ophuls in the Hollywood Studios, Rutgers University Press, 1996
Peter Bart & Peter Guber, Shoot Out: Surviving Fame & [Mis]Fortune in Hollywood, Faber & Faber, 2002
Andrew Bergman, We’re in the Money: Depression America and Its Films, New York University Press, 1971
Peter Biskind, Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film, Simon & Schuster, 2004
Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex ‘n’ Drugs ‘n’ Rock ‘n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, Bloomsbury, 1998
Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone By…, University of California Press, 1992
Leo Enticknap, Moving Image Technology: From Zoetrope to Digital, Wallflower Press, 2005
Hugh Fordin, M-G-M’s Greatest Musicals: The Arthur Freed Unit, Da Capo Press, 1996
Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, WH Allen, 1989
Benjamin B Hampton, History of the American Film Industry; From the Beginnings to 1931, Dover, 1970
Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film: A Critical History, Teacher’s College Press, 1968
Jonathan A Knee, Bruce C Greenwald & Ava Seave, The Curse of the Mogul: What’s Wrong with the World’s Leading Media Companies, Portfolio, 2009
Arthur Knight, The Liveliest Art: A Panoramic History of the Movies, Macmillan, 1957
John Pierson, Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema, Faber & Faber, 1996
Nick Roddick, A New Deal in Entertainment: Warner Brothers in the 1930s, BFI, 1983
Hal Wallis and Charles Higham, Starmaker: The Autobiography of Hal Wallis, Macmillan, 1980
2. Spring Term
Jens Andermann, New Argentine Cinema, I.B. Tauris, 2011
Birgit Beumers & Nancy Condee, The Cinema of Alexander Sokurov, I.B. Tauris, 2011
Peter Bondanella (ed), Federic Fellini: Essays in Criticism, Oxford University Press, 1978
Thomas Elsaesser, European Cinema: Face to Face With Hollywood, Amsterdam University Press, 2005
Alexander Graf, The Cinema of Wim Wenders: The Celluloid Highway, Wallflower Press, 2002
Dina Iordanova & Ruby Cheung, Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, St Andrews Film Studies, 2009
Dina Iordanova & Ruby Cheung, Film Festival Yearbook 2: Film Festivals and Imagined Communities, St Andrews Film Studies, 2010
Dina Iordanova & Ruby Cheung, Film Festival Yearbook 3: Film Festivals and East Asia, St Andrews Film Studies, 2011
Adrian Johns, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Guttenberg to Gates, University of Chicago Press, 2009
Lloyd Kaufman, Make Your Own Damn Movie: Secrets of a Renegade Director, St Martin’s Griffin, 2003
Anna Keel and Christian Strich, Fellini on Fellini, Eyre Methuen, 1976
Geoff King, Lost in Translation (American Indies), Edinburgh University Press, 2010
Colin McCabe, Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy, Bloomsbury, 2004
Todd McCarthy & Charles Flynn, Kings of the Bs: Working Within the Hollywood System, Dutton, 1975
Nick Roddick, ‘Eastern Promise’ (The Romanian New Wave), Sight & Sound, October 2007
Nick Roddick, ‘The Road Goes On Forever’ (Wim Wenders’ early movies), Sight & Sound, January 2008
Kenneth Turan, Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made, University of California Press, 2002
Director Strategies
This course gives students a firm understanding of contemporary critical strategies in relation to film auteurship, genre and aesthetic style and a rigorous understanding of cinema using an approach which privileges the filmmaker and his or her strategies. Strategies are defined as patterns of decisions which seem to be expressed in the films, which could be consciously used by directors working within limitations and conventions. These strategies are identified by showing and differentiating films made by particular classic directors or films made in particular strong aesthetic or social contexts. The course encourages students to understand director strategies within the context of a wide variety of theoretical concepts, from Walter Benjamin, Bazin, Freud, Melanie Klein, Levinas, Stanley Cavell, to contemporary Aristotelian ethics and Surrealism.
Film Research Methods
The Film Research course gives students a practical and theoretical introduction to researching film. The course explores the principles of conducting broad-based and thorough research into film, and provides students with opportunities to broaden their skills and deepen their practical expertise through research exercises. Film presents the researcher with a unique set of critical and applied challenges, and students will be familiarized with the wide set of possible routes into researching both film history and individual films. Topics covered include basic principles of film research, practical guides to researching in archives, and the historical analysis of images. The course also covers interdisciplinary research methods more generally, with special reference to film.
Curating Theory and Practice
Curating is a term that has emerged out of the art world into wider usage. With particular attention to the increasing presence of the moving image in art galleries and museums, this seminar course considers curatorial theory and practice in the contemporary art world. The course predominantly consists of seminars with practitioners, including artists and critics, but in particular curators. Through discussion with curators working in museums of modern art, in publicly funded temporary exhibition venues and in commercial galleries, the differing contexts of art world curatorship will be explored.
The course displays and questions the ideas, assumptions and political economy of art world curatorship. Amongst the questions raised by the course are: How does the economy of art work? What are the values that underpin public sector support for art? Who are the audiences for art? What are the considerations that come into play in selecting work for exhibition or purchase? What factors are in play in the differing ways art is displayed?
Core Teaching Faculty
Andrew Brighton was formally Senior Curator: Public Events at Tate Modern and has taught both art history and practice in various art schools including the Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths’ College. His publications include books on Francis Bacon, Picasso and David Hockney, he edited anthologies on cultural policy and management discourse and his articles and reviews have appeared in Art in America, Studio International, New Art Examiner, London Review of Books, Art Monthly and the Guardian. He curated Towards Another Picture (1977), The Bristol Sample (1979) and Blasphemies Ecstasies Cries (1989). He is a contributing editor to Critical Quarterly and is currently working on a graphic novel with Catherine Brighton.
Ben Gibson worked as a producer from the late 1980s to 2001, and as Head of Production at the British Film Institute from 1989 to 1999. His credits as producer and executive producer include Terence Davies’s The Long Day Closes, Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein, John Maybury’s Love Is the Devil, Carine Adler’s Under the Skin and Jasmin Dizdar’s Beautiful People, as well as 18 other low-budget features and numerous shorts by UK directors including Patrick Keiller, Gurinder Chadha, Lynne Ramsay, Richard Kwietniowski and Andrew Kotting. From 1981 to 1987 he was a partner in distributor The Other Cinema/Metro Pictures, acquiring and promoting films by Almodóvar, Marker, Akerman and Godard and opening the Metro Cinema. He has also been a theatre director, a repertory film programmer, founder of the London International Festival of Theatre and a film critic and journalist.
Teresa Gleadowe was director of the Curating Contemporary Art programme at the Royal College of Art, from its inauguration in 1992 until 2006. Prior to this she was a curator in the Visual Arts Department of the British Council from 1978 to 1989 and was Head of Information at the Tate Gallery from 1989 to 1992. She is Series Editor and Research Consultant for a new series of books on Exhibition Histories, published by Afterall, and has contributed to numerous conferences and anthologies on curating contemporary art. She teaches for De Appel Amsterdam and last year initiated and convened The Falmouth Convention, a three-day international meeting of artists, curators and writers.
Francis Gooding is the director of the MA in Film Curating at the London Consortium. He has written widely on subjects including film, art, music and anthropology, and was a researcher on the Colonial Film: Moving Images of Empire project (www.colonialfilm.org.uk). He is a contributing editor to Critical Quarterly and his book Black Light is published by Blackwells.
Colin MacCabe is an academic and a producer of film, television and installations. His books include Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy (Bloomsbury, 2004), T.S. Eliot (The British Council, 2006) and The Butcher Boy (Irish Film Institute, 2007). His recent work as a producer includes Owls at Noon Prelude; The Hollow Men (dir. Chris Marker); and Derek (dir. Isaac Julien).
Nick Roddick is a film journalist and academic. His books include A New Deal in Entertainment: Warner Brothers in the 1930s (BFI, 1984) and British Cinema Now (with Martin Auty, BFI, 1985). He has worked extensively as a trade journalist and consultant within the film industry and for a number of major film festivals. He is also a regular contributor to Sight and Sound, the Evening Standard and other publications.
The London Film School
Since 1956, the School has trained thousands of directors, cinematographers, editors and other film professionals now working across the globe. It is the most truly international school anywhere, with 70% of its students from outside the UK. In 2008, students’ films were screened at 110 festivals and won 12 major awards. Teaching is done through filmmaking, on stages, and in workshops rather than in classrooms - the building functions like a studio. LFS is a very independent non-profit school run by passionate and experienced filmmakers - 18 full-time faculty and a varied and hugely talented group of visiting lecturers, technicians and artists.
Read more here.
Financial Information
Tuition fees for 2011/12 are £10,000.
The Registry will advise you in detail about methods of payment: it is possible to pay in 3 termly instalments or, by direct debit in 8 monthly payments from October to May.
How to Apply
For more information about the programme please contact the Admissions Tutor, Sarah Joshi.
Prospective students may apply using Birkbeck’s online application system here.
It is also possible to download a printable application form here: Film Curating Application Form.
Please write ‘MA Film Curating (London Consortium)’ in the ‘programme title’ field and return it to:
The Registry
Birkbeck College
University of London
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HX
Applicants should include a short outline of professional and research interests. Two referees should be listed on the application form.
