Curating Film, Sharing Passions

• Credit value: 15 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Janet McCabe (subject to change)
• Assessment: a 3000-word essay (100%)

This module takes as its core a single film and charts its exhibition history and the different ways in which it has been conceptualised and presented to an audience. We ask what it means to archive and what’s involved in the politics of preservation and the ethics of presentation. From initial release to how a film has been remembered, (re)interpreted, lost and (re)remembered - by whom and why - the module looks at what it takes to keep a film in the present and how to make sense of its survival and its competing histories.

Indicative module content

• How to research the production, distribution and exhibition of a film
• How to interpret a text and perform analysis dependent on shifting historical and intellectual trends and cultural tastes
• Questions of film history and film canons (and their creation/custodians), as well as the role of the archive and preservation
• Identifying the role of the film programmer/curator as cinephile