Skip to main content

Birkbeck and SOAS offer new BA Global Cinemas and Screen Arts joint programme

Innovative course brings together expertise from two top London institutions

For the first time, undergraduate students will be able to study a degree in global cinema in the heart of London, thanks to an innovative new course offered by Birkbeck and SOAS. The two prestigious London institutions are bringing their expertise together to offer a programme of study that is truly global in its approach.

Students can choose to take a broad approach to the topic, combining modules on cinema from around the world, or they can chose to focus their studies on a particular geographic or linguistic area. Unusually for a course in film studies, students will also be able to study a language, to enable them to understand more fully the films that they are studying. Among the languages available are Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Swahili.

Staff from Birkbeck’s renowned Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies, Department of Film, Media and Cultural Studies, and Department of Cultures and Languages will lead the study of European, American and Latin American cinema, while staff from the creative writing team will offer modules in screen-writing. Students will be able to take part in the activities and events of the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image and the film-making workshops offered at the Derek Jarman lab.  The SOAS Centre for Film Studies will lead the study of African, Asian and Middle Eastern cinemas in the programme. Students will be able to access expertise across African and postcolonial film and literature, Chinese-language theatres, contemporary Japanese culture and Hindi cinema and film culture in South Asia. SOAS is also host to a wide-range of international film screenings such as the Taiwan Film Screenings series, which feature a Q&A session with invited film makers, actors or film scholars and critics, and Indonesian Kontemporer event which is inspired by Indonesian arts and cultural traditions.

Dr Dorota Ostrowska, the co-Director of the Programme, said: “This course offers undergraduate students a huge amount of flexibility with regards to the direction that they want to take their studies in. They will benefit from having access to leading academics from two of the University of London’s colleges, which are conveniently located in close proximity in the heart of London.”

The BA Global Cinemas and Screen Arts will be accepting its first students in October 2015. Applications are now open via UCAS.

More news about: