VSA3050

Remaking Film ( 6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL)

Leader: Con Verevis

Offered:
Not offered in 2005.

Synopsis: From its very beginnings, the cinema has endlessly repeated and remade the same stories. This unit begins with the understanding that texts are not closed and self-contained structures but are the repetition and transformation of other textual structures. Film remaking becomes a particular, institutionalised instance of a type of quotation effect that exists in and for every film text. This unit broadly explores the idea of cinematic remaking-as genre, quotation, allusion, adaptation and transformation-in relation to contemporary and classical film and other visual texts.

Objectives: By the completion of this unit students will be expected to: 1. Recognise that meaning is not simply an intra-textual property of a particular text but an effect of historically specific inter- and extra-textual material technologies or institutions. 2. Demonstrate an understanding of the concept of intertextuality in film studies and its relation to such categories as quotation, allusion, translation, adaptation and genre. 3. Translate the in-principle concept of intertextuality into an understanding of the particular institutional structures that maintain the category of the film remake and the related categories of the serial, series and sequel. 4. Display an ability to critically engage with written and filmic texts in a clear and confident manner in both written and oral presentation. 5. Demonstrate an ability to extend subject essay topics into the development of independent research projects.

Assessment: Essay (3000 words):60%; Visual test (1.5 hours)(1500 words): 40%

Contact Hours: 4 hours (1 x 1 hour lecture, 1 x 1 hour tutorial and 1 x 2 hour screening) per week

Prerequisites: Students should have completed a first year sequence in Visual Culture or a related discipline approved by the unit coordinator

Prohibitions: VSA 2050