Modules
Courses / Modules / FILM2026 Film, Realism and Reality: representing the world, from revolution to the everyday

Film, Realism and Reality: representing the world, from revolution to the everyday

When you'll study it
Semester 2
CATS points
15
ECTS points
7.5
Level
Level 5
Module lead
Louis Bayman
Academic year
2025-26

Module overview

This module will introduce you to some of the principal realist and documentary movements, asking how the simple aim to ‘show things as they really are’ has resulted in a range of creative and wildly different cinematic forms. It will consider the issue as one of film aesthetics, and will trace its development historically, ranging from early cinema to reality TV, and as a global question of film movements. It will discuss the different political purposes of different types of realist and documentary cinemas, their relationship to industrial questions and state institutions, and ask how their social aims produce different artistic and formal outcomes, each of which expresses an idea about how cinema functions as a way of knowing the world and of changing it – or of keeping it as it is.

Linked modules

FILM1020 or FILM1001 or FILM2006 or FILM1027 or FILM1020