Overview

This unit promotes an interrogation into the limits of screen culture and screen production. It promotes analysis into the ways that film and television has attempted to extend and innovate within screen media. The program seeks to confront the ways that film and television makers have challenged the status quo in terms of aesthetics, narrative and form, as well as in challenging traditional notions of taste, quality and value. This unit also aims to investigate the role of the screen as a mode for activism, propaganda and social and political change.

Requisites

Prerequisites

75 credit points

Teaching periods
Location
Start and end dates
Last self-enrolment date
Census date
Last withdraw without fail date
Results released date
Semester 2
Location
Hawthorn
Start and end dates
04-August-2025
02-November-2025
Last self-enrolment date
17-August-2025
Census date
31-August-2025
Last withdraw without fail date
19-September-2025
Results released date
09-December-2025

Learning outcomes

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:

  • Evaluate and critique concepts of value and quality in screen media
  • Respond to and engage with key debates in screen studies and substantiate a position
  • Analyse relationships between screen media and social and political cultures
  • Assess modes of spectatorship in relation to varied screen systems
  • Apply conceptual frameworks to an analysis of screen innovations
  • Formulate research hypotheses and conduct independent research
  • Develop clear arguments through research and the analysis of selected texts and use of critical screenings

Teaching methods

Hawthorn

Type Hours per week Number of weeks Total (number of hours)
On-campus
Class		3.00 12 weeks 36
On-campus
Class		1.00 12 weeks 12
Specified Activities
Various		3.50 12 weeks 42
Unspecified Activities
Various		5.00 12 weeks 60
TOTAL150

Assessment

Type Task Weighting ULO's
Critical Analysis/ProvocationIndividual 40% 1,4,5 
PresentationIndividual 10% 1,2,3 
Research EssayIndividual 50% 2,3,5,6,7 

Content

  • Paracinema and questions of value, quality and taste in screen media
  • Technology, community, engulfment, ephemeral screen experiences
  • Extensions of the screen through sound, image and narrative
  • Screen cultures and questions of morality
  • Sex and violence on screen in the cinema and in our homes
  • Censorship in relation to cultural values
  • Recognising alternative histories in film and television
  • Activism, post-coloniality, and the impact of political cinema
  • Graduate Attribute – Communication Skills: Verbal communication
  • Graduate Attribute – Communication Skills: Communicating using different media
  • Graduate Attribute – Digital Literacies: Information literacy

Study resources

Reading materials

A list of reading materials and/or required textbooks will be available in the Unit Outline on Canvas.