• Inactive for Year: 2024/25

• Module Leader(s): Dr Caleb Johnston
• Lecturer: Dr Raksha Pande

• Owning School: Geography, Politics & Sociology
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

To provide knowledge on a range of theoretical approaches to film and human geography

• To develop analytical skills to critically engage film as a site of popular cultural production
• To strengthen the ability to present verbally and constructively debate ideas with colleagues
• To develop written skills in a substantive essay

Outline Of Syllabus

Module Description

We live in a hyper-visual world in which we are exposed to and consume visual information on a scale unprecedented in human history. Whether we are engrossed in the latest Netflix series or scrolling through Facebook or YouTube, we are saturated with visual culture. Within this new global media-scape, it is vital that we develop the tools to critically engage with visual culture through informed viewing practices. In this module, we will focus on the medium of film, and will engage with film as a textual assemblage which when examined through a geographical lens can not only enrich our ‘geographical imagination’ but can also help us to engage and respond critically to key social and political issues of our times. By exploring the exchange between film, representation and critical spectatorship, this module will consider how film functions as a dominant visual and discursive economy through which social, geopolitical and cultural meanings are imagined, produced, circulated, and contested. We will think through the ways that film offers a medium for travelling across and juxtaposing different worlds and rupturing dominant narratives about place. Working through a selection of films from Western and non-Western contexts, we examine film’s ability to provide a powerful tool of visual storytelling; to provoke critical thought; to stimulate novel sensory experiences; and as a means of dis-ordering and re-ordering time and space. Each week, following an orientation lecture, we will watch a film. This will be followed by an extended seminar discussion engaging with a set of required readings that students are expected to read closely. An important emphasis is placed on seminar participation, meaning that students are expected to come to class prepared to discuss course materials. Each week different students will be responsible for leading seminar discussions. Students will sign up to lead group discussion from a list of required readings, and they will be asked to come to seminars with 4-5 questions designed to prompt and guide group discussion. This component will not be assessed but it nevertheless represents an important contribution to the course.

Lecture 1 Introduction to Film, Modernity and Metropolis
Film: Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertoz, 1929)

Lecture 2 Spatial Ruptures and Italian Neo-Realism
Film: Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio de Sica, 1948)

Lecture 3 Cities under Siege
Film: Return to Homs (Talal Dereki, 2014)

Lecture 4 Creative Disruptions
Film: Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy 2010)

Lecture 5 Hollywood, Film Noir and Cities of Night
Film: Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)

Week 6: No Class for dissertation hand in

Lecture 7 Longings and Missed Connections in a Global City
Film: Chungking Express (Kar-Wai Wong 1994)

Lecture 8: Hindi Art Cinema: Borders and People
Film: Earth (Deepa Mehta, 1992)

Lecture 9: Queering the City
Film: My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985)

Lecture 10: Of Geography: Women and Empire
Film: Letters from Baghdad (Zeva Oelbaum, Sabine Krayenbuhl, 2016)

Lecture 11: Japanese Anime: Fantasy and Globalisation
Film: Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)

Lecture 12: Class Stories and Storytellers
Film: The Arbour (Clio Barnard, 2010)

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

The module will be structured in a weekly 3-hour teaching block, comprising of a lecture and film screening. This will be followed by a 1-hour seminar discussion led by a Teaching Assistant. This will allow the students to engage with the module themes in an intensive way with first hand guidance from the lecturers. The lecture will introduce the key concepts and will set up the learning expectations from the film screening. The seminar will be based on pre-set readings and will be aimed at helping students to develop analytical and critical skills. We want students to work collaboratively and the collective viewing experience will help them to do so by encouraging them to enhance their listening, reading/writing and communications skills in a supportive environment.

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Seminar discussions enable students:
-       Work and think critically and independently
-       Share and debate ideas with their colleagues in a supportive and collegial setting
-       Lead discussions on key readings

Written assignments (film review and essay) require students to:
-       Develop their own independent argument
-       Put concepts into practice
-       Find and use relevant literature
-       Develop and hone their own writing and analytical skills

Reading Lists

• GEO3149's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• GEO3149's Timetable