Popular Cinema

This course introduces students to the different genres of contemporary popular global cinemas. In addition to Hollywood feature films, students will study non-Hollywood contemporary films that have proven successfully at the box offices either internationally and/or in their countries of production in order to study the critical elements that have contributed to the success of these films. Students will be exposed to box office hits from a wide variety of countries such as Spain, the UK, Japan, Korea, India and Australia. The analysis of these popular films will be contextualised in relation to relevant film theories such as genre theory, audience reception theories, studies of the economic development of new cinematic industries and the impact of global film distribution.