Postcinema

The course is a freestanding course.

Completed courses for a bachelor degree in the Humanities, or the equivalent. In addition to this, competence in English that equals English B/English 6.

In digital media cultures platforms and producers multiply while visual narratives unfold across multiple networks of different frames. In this course, students will explore, analyze, and theorize the structures and potentials of postcinema and create their own postcinematic artifacts such as video essays and desktop documentaries. This course approaches postcinema from theoretical as well as practical perspectives. We will theorize the impact of digital technologies on cinematic cultures and storytelling, discuss a range of topics including network aesthetics, mind-game films, transmedia storytelling, the politics of low-resolution imagery, and the aesthetic potentials of amateur and prosumer digital production. We will also consider how contemporary cultures of amateur production such as video essays and desktop documentaries fit into a longer history of experimentation with the possibilities and limits of new mediums, from the avantgardes up to the present.

After passing the course, students shall be able to:

Knowledge and understanding

• understand and discuss postcinema in depth,
• compare and contrast different advanced theoretical approaches to postcinema,

Competence and skills

• theorize postcinema from economic, aesthetic and technological advanced perspectives,
• historicize postcinema within a longer tradition of media transformations,
• produce postcinematic artifacts such as video essays and desktop documentaries,

Judgement and approach

• critically analyze various postcinematic forms from a gender-, economic-, power-, and production-perspective,
• critically analyze transmedia storytelling, network aesthetics, post-cinematica esthetics, and amateur and prosumer digital productions.

Lectures, seminars and presentation of audiovisual material.

Language of instruction: English

The course is examined through presentations, assignments and a final project.

If a student who has been failed twice for the same examination element wishes to change examiner before the next examination session, such a request is to be granted unless there are specific reasons to the contrary (Chapter 6 Section22HF).

If a student has received a certificate of disability study support from the University of Gothenburg with a recommendation of adapted examination and/or adapted forms of assessment, an examiner may decide, if this is consistent with the course’s intended learning outcomes and provided that no unreasonable resources would be needed, to grant the student adapted examination and/or adapted forms of assessment.

If a course has been discontinued or undergone major changes, the student must be offered at least two examination sessions in addition to ordinary examination sessions. These sessions are to be spread over a period of at least one year but no more than two years after the course has been discontinued/changed. The same applies to placement and internship (VFU) except that this is restricted to only one further examination session.

If a student has been notified that they fulfil the requirements for being a student at Riksidrottsuniversitetet (RIU student), to combine elite sports activities with studies, the examiner is entitled to decide on adaptation of examinations if this is done in accordance with the Local rules regarding RIU students at the University of Gothenburg.

The grading scale comprises: Pass with Distinction (VG), Pass (G) and Fail (U).

The results of and possible changes to the course will be shared with students who participated in the evaluation and students who are starting the course.

Aspects of gender equality and equal treatment will be considered in the content, the literature, the teaching, and the evaluations of the course.

This is a translated version of the Swedish original. In case of differences between the Swedish version and the English translation, the Swedish original shall prevail.