Big Screen, Little Island: Britain and Genre Filmmaking

(1 Credit Hour) · Undergraduate

This course will examine British society through the lens of genre, in both classic and contemporary British cinema. Each week, we will analyze a British genre film in terms of craft (including story structure, visual design, and performance), critical contexts, and academic scholarship. By comparing British films with American films and tropes out of Hollywood (which will be more familiar to our American students), we will identify what is innately “British” about these pieces of cinema, and how they meet or defy American expectations of their respective genres. We will then decide how these variations reflect differences in our respective societies.