FI366-15 Screening Venice (15 CAT)
Introductory description
This intensive module, principally delivered at Warwick’s specialised teaching facility in the Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, will offer you an immersive opportunity to apply different aspects of your previous teaching and learning experience to a series of applied workshop-style activities based around the multi-focal relationship between various historical, contemporary and future-facing screen cultures and the city of Venice. You will firstly engage with a series of critical and theoretical debates about the notion of the cinematic city and explore the long history of Venetian screen representation through both selected readings and viewings and group-based location focussed audio-visual workshops. The module will then move on to the consider the live nature of the city as a place of artistic spectacle. We will engage with both the Venice International Film Festival (VIFF) and the Venice Biennale and explore the various ways in which modern-day screen cultures help mediate the city’s identity as a site of contemporary global cultural activity. You will engage with emerging critical scholarship on film festivals and have an opportunity to explore the aesthetic, cultural, industrial, historical and intermedial dimensions of the world’s oldest screen event of its kind. The final part of the module will consider the future of the city in terms of its various ecological and environmental aspects. You will be invited to explore the wider geographical dimensions of Venice and locate recent screen-based work in the context of various political and eco-critical debates. All aspects of the module will privilege group based critical thinking and learning opportunities, with the chance to individually explore different aspects of the module’s coverage in more detail through an assessed portfolio consisting of a written project accompanied by a piece of practical audio-visual work.
Module aims
- To develop students’ awareness of the long history of Venice’s relationship with cinema, both on- and off-screen.
- To integrate previously acquired skills of close textual analysis, historical enquiry and theoretical debate within a series of multi-faceted case-studies related to the study of the cinematic city.
- To explore the temporal and spatial flows which constitute the critical and experiential nature of Venice’s engagement with screen cultures past, present and future.
- To provide students with the analytical confidence to deploy innovative modes of documentation outside the orbit of the conventional university classroom e.g. on-location ‘visual notebook’ footage, festival architecture and event programming, on-site exploration of specific cultural geographies and histories.
- To strengthen and deepen existing skills of collaborative, team-based learning and critical enquiry.
- To develop deeper and more experiential awareness of the applied nature of film and television studies re the environmental humanities and the international cultural industries sector.
- To develop students’ inter-cultural awareness and global mindedness.
Outline syllabus
This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.
This is an indicative module outline and therefore only gives an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ. Please note that due to the intensive nature of the proposed teaching and learning experience, the number of contact hours may very well exceed conventional models of module delivery. It will normally be expected that each day’s activities will encompass of number of different elements and activities, some held on location in the Palazzo and some within the city of Venice itself.
June
Day One (held at Warwick): intensive module induction
Late August to mid-September
Day Two: Venice as a Cinematic City (I), screening, seminar discussion, workshop, project discussion
Day Three: Venice and Cinema: the history and practice of the Venice International Film Festival + festival registration
Day Four: Venice International Film Festival field trip and critical projects (ii) + summary seminar discussion
Day Five: Venice and its Island Geographies: screenings, seminar discussion, workshop, project discussion
Day Six: field trip to the Venice Biennale + summary seminar discussion
October
Day Seven: Portfolio preparation workshop and tutorials
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, students should be able to:
- Students demonstrate a critical awareness of the historical and theoretical debates regarding Venice’s specific orientation as a cinematic city
- Students have tested and extended their knowledge on an experiential level through various collaborative on-site workshop and discussion activities.
- Students have acquired skills of collaborative working, critical reflection and inter-cultural awareness in a fast-moving and immersive learning environment.
- Students have gained skills of critical production in the form of the gathering and analysis of on-site audio-visual material and the retrieval and analysis of on-site event documentation.
- Students demonstrate critical and contextual thinking in the form of a series of real-life ‘live’ scenarios related to both the fields of academic study and the world of work.
- Students have developed a critical and conceptually informed approach to the application of filmmaking practices to the study of the specific urban-littoral environment of Venice.
Indicative reading list
Bijsterveld, Karin (ed.), (2013), Soundscapes of the Urban Past (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag)
Bosma, Peter (2015), Film Programming (London: Wallflower Press).
Brunetta, Gian Piero (2022), The Venice International Film Festival 1932-2022 (La Biennale di Venezia)
Butler, Alison (2017) '13 Ways of Looking at a Lake' in Gibbs J., Pye D. (eds) The Long Take. Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television. (London: Palgrave Macmillan).
Calvino, Italo (1997), Invisible Cities (London: Vintage)
Caroli, Rosa and Soriani, Stefano (eds.) (2017), Fragile and Resilient Cities on Water: Perspectives from Venice and Tokyo (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars).
Castro, Teresa (2009), 'Cinema's Mapping Impulse: Questioning Visual Culture' in The Cartographic Journal, Vol. 46 No. 1 (Cinematic Cartography Special Issue)
Cusack, Peter (2013), 'Field Recording as Sonic Journalism' in Angus Carlyle and Cathy Lane (eds.) On Listening (Axminster: Uniformbooks)
Davis, Robert C. (2004) Venice, the Tourist Maze: A Cultural Critique of the World’s Most Touristed City (Berkeley: University of California Press).
De Valck, Marijke (2008), Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press).
Elsaesser, Thomas (2005), ‘Film Festival Networks: The New Topographies of Cinema in Europe’ in Elsaesser, European Cinema: Face to Face With Hollywood (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press).
Fletcher, C.A. and Spencer, T. (eds.) (2005) Flooding and Environmental Challenges for Venice and its Lagoon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Fowkes, Stuart (2018), ' The Noise Made by People : Anthropophony, Cities, and Memory' in Stuart Hyatt, Janneane Blevins, and Benjamin Blevins, eds.) Metaphonics (Heijningen: Jap Sam Books).
Gandy, Matthew (2017), 'Urban Atmospheres' in Cultural Geographies, Vol. 24(3) 353–374
Hagener, Malte (2007), Moving Forward, Looking Back. The European Avant Garde and the Invention of Film Culture, 1919-1939 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press).
Harbord, Janet (2002), ‘Film Festivals: Media Events and Spaces of Flow’ in Harbord, Film Cultures (London: Sage).
Harbord, Janet (2009), ‘Film Festivals-Time-Event’ in Dina Iordanova and Ragan Rhyne (eds.) Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit (St. Andrews: University of St. Andrews Press).
Helphand, Kenneth I. (1986), 'Landscape Films' in Landscape Journal , Spring 1986, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring), pp. 1-8
Jacobs, Steven (2019) (ed.), The City Symphony Phenomenon: Cinema, Art and Urban Modernity Between the Wars (New York: Routledge).
Keiller, Patrick (2013) 'Film as Spatial Critique‘ in The View From the Train: Cities and Other Landscapes (London: Verso)
Loist, Skandi (2016,) ‘The Film Festival Circuit: Networks, Hierarchies and Circulation’ in De Valck, Marijke et al (eds.) Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice (London and New York: Routledge).
Lynch, Kevin (1964), The Image of the City (Massachusetts: MIT Press)
Pallasmaa, Juhani (2005), The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses (Chichester: John Wiley and Sons Ltd)
Pallasmaa, Juhani (2014), 'Space, Place, and Atmosphere: Peripheral Perception in Existential Experience' in Christian Borch (ed.), Architectural Atmospheres: On the Experience and Politics of Architecture (Basel: Birkhauser)
Panse, Silke (2022), 'Ten Skies, 13 Lakes, 15 Pools – Structure, Immanence and Ecoaesthetics in The Swimmer and James Benning’s Land Films' in Screening Nature, ed. Anat Pick and Guinevere Narraway (Bergahn Books).
Penz, François and Koeck, Richard (eds.), (2017) Cinematic Urban Geographies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).
Penz, François (2017), Cinematic Aided Design: An Everyday Life Approach to Architecture (London and New York: Routledge).
Pigott, Michael (2013), World Film Locations: Venice (Bristol: Intellect Press).
Pink, Sarah (2009), Doing Sensory Ethnography (London: SAGE).
Sanderson, Mark (1996) Don’t Look Now (London: BFI Publishing).
Standish, Dominic (2011), Venice in Environmental Peril? Myth and Reality (University Press of America)
Tobe, Renée (2017), Film, Architecture and Spatial Imagination (London: Routledge)
Vidler, Anthony (1993), ‘The Explosion of Space: Architecture and the Filmic Imaginary’ in Assemblage, No. 21, August, pp. 44-59
Wood, Denis (2013), Everything Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas (Siglio Press)
Weihsmann, Helmut (2011), ‘Ciné-City Strolls: Imagery, Form, Language and Meaning of the City Film’ in François Penz and Sheldon Lu (eds.) Urban Cinematics (Bristol: Intellect Press).
Wyborw, Nicolas (2021), Urban Sensographies (London: Routledge).
Interdisciplinary
Students will be invited to engage with a range of other disciplines in combination with the core methodological approaches offered by Film and Television Studies. They will draw especially upon historical and cultural research, as well as aspects of urban geography and environmental sustainability. Students will also explore the value of practical filmmaking and field recording as methods for the investigation of urban space, film culture, and ecology.
International
The module will primarily take place in Venice, using the WarwickVenice Centre as a base, but will also engage with the Venice Film Festival, the Venice Art Biennale, and the Architecture Beinnale. The module will be concerned precisely with the cultural, historical and geographical specificity of Venice as an Italian, European and international city.
Subject specific skills
This module is designed to recontextualise and develop the many subject specific skills introduced in the first two years of the BA degrees we offer in Film and Television Studies including audio-visual literacy and an advanced understanding of the critical, historical and theoretical frameworks underpinning the study of the moving image. The module will also open up and explore the intersection between Film and Television Studies and other practices related to place, geography, ecology, architecture and the circulation of contemporary global culture.
Transferable skills
Critical and analytical thinking
Teamwork and collaborative problem solving
Audio-visual literacy
Independent research
Inter-cultural awareness
Study time
| Type | Required |
|---|---|
| Lectures | 2 sessions of 1 hour 30 minutes (2%) |
| Seminars | 7 sessions of 1 hour 30 minutes (7%) |
| Project supervision | 1 session of 1 hour (1%) |
| Practical classes | 2 sessions of 2 hours (3%) |
| Fieldwork | 5 sessions of 3 hours (10%) |
| Other activity | 8 hours (5%) |
| Private study | 108 hours 30 minutes (72%) |
| Total | 150 hours |
Private study description
- Study of films and literature around the history of screen representations of Venice during the Summer.
- Research and writing of essay for assessment.
- Editing and post-production of audio-visual piece for assessment
Other activity description
4 x 2-hour in-class screenings (separate to the screenings attended at Venice Film Festival, which are classed under 'Fieldwork')
Costs
No further costs have been identified for this module.
You must pass all assessment components to pass the module.
Assessment group A
| Weighting | Study time | Eligible for self-certification | |
|---|---|---|---|
Assessment component |
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| Portfolio | 100% | Yes (extension) | |
|
A portfolio consisting of:
These two elements may focus on different topics, or they may approach the same topic, using the different modes in complementary way. The marks for the two components of the portfolio would be weighted at 60% and 40% of the total mark, with the balance to be determined by students in consultation with module tutors. The two possibilities would therefore be: 3000 word essay + audio-visual piece (4 - 6 min) OR 2000 word essay + audio-visual piece (6 - 8 min). Both written and audio-visual components are submitted together at the end of the Autumn Term. This allows time for the development of both aspects after the Venice field-trip, with guidance from module tutors during term-time at Warwick. |
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Reassessment component is the same |
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Feedback on assessment
Written feedback via module feedback form
Pre-requisites
To take this module, you must have passed:
Courses
This module is Optional for:
- Year 3 of UFIA-W620 Undergraduate Film Studies
- Year 4 of UFIA-W621 Undergraduate Film Studies (with Year Abroad)
- Year 4 of UFIA-QW26 Undergraduate Film and Literature (with Study Abroad)
This module is Option list A for:
- Year 3 of UFIA-QW25 Undergraduate Film and Literature