Sample film studies Essay Questions

• Analysing the individualistic character of Gatsby, Daisy and Tom Buchanan.
• Critically analyse a range of approaches to photography encountered in this module, including, Bazin, Bordieu, and Barthes. These approaches should be evaluated through and address to photographs. You are advised to select at least two and no more than four.
• Critically compare reality TV with the traditional documentary form. ( You would need to use a primary example from each area as your focus, with a range of other texts supporting your analysis)
• Examine the ways in which place functions in the narrative of a number of city films.
• How was the development of stars the product of specific social structures, economic factors and image manipulation?
• Identify the narrative devices and techniques used to involve the audience intellectually and emotionally in either a short film or films (20-30 minutes total) or a 20-30-minute excerpt from a feature film. Analyse their strengths and weaknesses.
• Outline and evaluate Laura Mulveys reading of Vertigo in " Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema".
• To what extent do films like Fight Club and Being John Malkovich continue this tradition?
• Discuss the extent to which Das Cabinet des Doktor Caligari reflects the socio-political upheaval in Germany after World War I.
• Is Star Wars a Western (cowboy) Film- Making reference to Will Wright' essay entitled " The structure of Myth and the Structure of the western film" ; argue the case of star wars being or not being a western.
• 'The repressed always returns.' Drawing upon ideas derived from psychoanalytic theory, discuss this claim in relation to Lynch's film Lost Highway.

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