Film Studies

The Film Studies curriculum is designed to develop our students so they are:

• Ambitious in their exploration of film and film practice in national, global and historical contexts
• Confident in their analysis of the ways films generate meanings and responses, and the application of critical approaches to film
• Independent in their responses as spectators, and as researchers into film and its key contexts (including social, cultural, political, historical and technological contexts)
• Creative in their practical coursework, as they apply their knowledge and understanding of film through either filmmaking or screenwriting.

Through their two-year journey as students of film, exploring a powerful and culturally significant art form which inspires a range of responses, students follow a wide-ranging and academically ambitious curriculum which provides the essential knowledge and skills to investigate how film works both as a medium of representation and as an aesthetic medium.

The curriculum offers opportunities to study a range of film, from its earliest days in the silent era to the emerging digital present, covering English and non-English-language films, documentary and experimental films, films by women directors and films which represent particular ethnic and cultural experiences. Practical production coursework involves the study of a diverse range of short films, as students apply their knowledge and understanding of how such films are constructed to their own high-quality film and screenplay work. We intend that students’ experiences of film should help to provide the intellectual curiosity, cultural understanding and personal development at the heart of the Langton Family.  

Minimum Entry Criteria

Desired: 7 in English Language

Essential: 6 in English Language

Board

Eduqas (WJEC)

Outline of the Course

In Year 12 students will study:

• 2 Hollywood films, from 1930-1960 and 1961-1990. Examples: Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958), Alien (Scott, 1979)
• One US independent film post-2010. Examples: Beasts of the Southern Wild (Zeitlin, 2012)
• Two films for Global Cinema. Examples: Pan’s Labyrinth (Del Toro, 2006), City of God (Meirelles, 2002)
• Two modern British films. Examples: Shaun of the Dead (Wright, 2004), This is England (Meadows, 2006)
• Year 12 students also begin to make a production. Either a film extract, Or: a screenplay, plus a storyboard

In Year 13 students will study:

• A second American film (modern, mainstream). Examples: Little Women (Gerwig, 2019), LaLa Land (Chazelle, 2016)
• A documentary film. Examples: The Arbor (Barnard, 2010), Amy (Kapadia, 2015)
• A silent film, or group of films. Examples: Strike (Eisenstein, 1924), Sunrise (Murnau, 1927)
• An experimental film, or group of films. Examples: Mulholland Drive (Lynch, US, 2001)
• Year 13 students complete the production they began in Year 12

Assessment

Summer Assignment - Film Studies

Sixth Form Programme of Courses.pdf