The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide (2025)
Lancaster's degree in Fine Art and Film, taught by the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts , gives you the opportunity to study art practice alongside the history and theory of film.
Your Fine Art modules will provide you with the opportunity to integrate Art Practice with Art History/Theory at a high level. Throughout your degree you will have the opportunity to develop creative and technical skills in painting, drawing, sculpture, digital art and their hybrids. We have a wide ranging view of what fine Art can be in the 21st century and have no ‘house style’. Our aim is for you to develop the practice and ideas that best reflect your aims and values as a young Fine Artist. Your tutors will be professional artists and publishing historians/theorists and the mix of academic and creative skills gained at Lancaster makes you highly attractive for postgraduate study and employers.
Film at Lancaster offers stimulating and intellectually engaging modules, which provide a framework for the close analysis of individual films. You will study cinema history and the social significance of films and will develop a detailed understanding of the techniques of film production. You will also have the opportunity to produce short films in all years of your study. You can choose from a range of specialist courses and will develop skills that can lead to postgraduate study and careers in the media, advertising and marketing.
Cutting-edge production facilities, a strong theoretical grounding, and a global perspective on film. Hear what Film Studies at Lancaster University could offer to you.
Students at work
You’ll be developing your practical skills in our film production modules by experimenting with narrative films or documentaries. We provide top-of-the-line production equipment so you can create your own original content.
Practical experience
You will have the opportunity to produce short films in all three years of your study.
Interesting surroundings
Make use of Lancaster’s stunning surroundings for the perfect film setting – cityscape, rural backdrop or coastal charm.
Film production
Gain practical film-making skills and an understanding of film production.
Production equipment
We provide top-of-the-line production equipment so you can create your own original content. Enjoy 24/7 access to our editing suites and specialist equipment, including cinema-ready digital cameras.
Showcase your films
Every year our final year students showcase their films in a major degree show exhibition, that is open to the public.
Fine Art at Lancaster University
Fine Art at Lancaster offers a distinctive blend of theory and practice, with teaching by practicing artists and your own studio space. Hear from students on what Fine Art at Lancaster University has to offer to you.
Your year abroad
Study abroad
The study abroad option is an exciting opportunity for anyone who is thinking of working abroad during their career or who simply wants the experience of living and studying overseas as part of their degree.
Often study abroad students describe the year abroad as a “transformative experience”, as it can shape your future career path as well as having a positive impact on your personal development.
You will study in your third year at one of our international partner universities. This will help you to
develop your global outlook
expand your professional network
increase your cultural awareness
develop your personal skills.
Host universities
During your year abroad, you will choose specialist modules relating to your degree and potentially other modules offered by the host university that are specialisms of that university and country.
The places available at our overseas partners vary each year, but destinations have previously included Australia, USA, Canada, Europe and Asia.
Alternative option
We will make reasonable endeavours to place students at an approved overseas partner university that offers appropriate modules. Occasionally places overseas may not be available for all students who want to study abroad or the place at the partner university may be withdrawn if core modules are unavailable.
If you are not offered a place to study overseas, you will be able to transfer to the equivalent standard 3-year degree scheme and would complete your studies at Lancaster. Lancaster University cannot accept responsibility for any financial aspects of the year abroad.
Careers
A Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts combined degree gives graduates the opportunity to develop confidence and the capability to produce work for themselves. Our graduates have become professional artists, while others have chosen to work as community artists and designers, arts administrators and managers. Film graduates have gone into TV production roles, independent film production and jobs in advertising, marketing and media production.
The transferable skills gained through studying a Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts combined degree at Lancaster make our graduates extremely attractive to a wide range of employers within different creative industries, including the media. Some of our graduates pursue postgraduate vocational training in media-related professions, such as broadcast and print journalism, or take their skills into promotional and marketing roles.Many of our graduates also go on to further study often becoming academics, lecturers and teachers or further vocational training in film production, including the prestigious New York Film Academy and London Film School.
Lancaster University is dedicated to ensuring you not only gain a highly reputable degree, but that you also graduate with relevant life and work based skills. We are unique in that every student is eligible to participate in The Lancaster Award which offers you the opportunity to complete key activities such as work experience, employability/career development, campus community and social development. Visit our Employability section for full details.
A Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts combined degree gives graduates the opportunity to develop confidence and the capability to produce work for themselves. Our graduates have become professional artists, while others have chosen to work as community artists and designers, arts administrators and managers. Film graduates have gone into TV production roles, independent film production and jobs in advertising, marketing and media production.
The transferable skills gained through studying a Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts combined degree at Lancaster make our graduates extremely attractive to a wide range of employers within different creative industries, including the media. Some of our graduates pursue postgraduate vocational training in media-related professions, such as broadcast and print journalism, or take their skills into promotional and marketing roles.Many of our graduates also go on to further study often becoming academics, lecturers and teachers or further vocational training in film production, including the prestigious New York Film Academy and London Film School.
Entry requirements
Grade Requirements
A Level ABB
Required Subjects A level Art and Design or one other humanities subject considered desirable but not essential
IELTS 6.5 overall with at least 5.5 in each component. For other English language qualifications we accept, please see our English language requirements webpages.
Portfolio Applicants will be required to submit a portfolio before being made an offer. The department will contact applicants to request the portfolio. The portfolio should include imaginative, expressive and analytical work as well as objective drawing.
Other Qualifications
International Baccalaureate 32 points overall with 16 points from the best 3 Higher Level subjects
BTEC Distinction, Distinction, Merit
Foundation Courses Art Foundation Courses are not an essential requirement for this degree. Please note Foundation Courses are considered but not accepted in lieu of our academic entry requirements. Level 3 Art Foundation courses are considered on a case-by-case basis alongside two A levels at grade B or above.
We welcome applications from students with a range of alternative UK and international qualifications, including combinations of qualification. Further guidance on admission to the University, including other qualifications that we accept, frequently asked questions and information on applying, can be found on our general admissions webpages.
Lancaster University offers a range of programmes, some of which follow a structured study programme, and some which offer the chance for you to devise a more flexible programme to complement your main specialism.
Information contained on the website with respect to modules is correct at the time of publication, and the University will make every reasonable effort to offer modules as advertised. In some cases changes may be necessary and may result in some combinations being unavailable, for example as a result of student feedback, timetabling, Professional Statutory and Regulatory Bodies' (PSRB) requirements, staff changes and new research. Not all optional modules are available every year.
This module seeks to establish fundamental Fine Art practices and principles and initiate development of critical understanding of basic concepts, approaches, possibilities and ways of working. The module enables students to engage with the practical disciplines of painting, sculpture, digital art, drawing and inter-media practices that combine two or more disciplines. This creative work alongside academic work in LICA100 initiates training in thinking and making as a fine artist.
This practical course combines technical skills with different approaches to the disciplines as appropriate to developing individual interests as a practitioner of fine art. The teaching and learning systems for this course are designed to expose the student to ways of working and thinking as a practitioner; to thinking visually.
In this module, Fine Art ideas and movements are surveyed viewed through pairings of major exhibitions throughout modern history, from the birth of avant gardes in The Salon des Refuses (1863) and Manet and the Impressionists (1910), to major shows on Digital Culture, Neoliberalism and non-Western art in the 21st century. This module is designed to supplement, contextualise and enhance the essential knowledge and skills covered in the Studio Practice module, and develop study and writing skills that you will need as you progress through your degree.
This module will introduce you to key methods, tools and critical concepts used by academics to understand a broad range of creative work, its discussion and practice historically and today. Through a combination of lectures and seminars, you are encouraged to think of yourself as a "creative critic" who uses intelligent observations about the creative world to inform your own practice of writing and making.
This module is designed to supplement and enhance the essential knowledge and skills covered in “Introduction to Film Studies”, and develops the study skills that you will require as you progress through the course. It will be taught through lectures, seminars and weekly screenings of case study films, including themes such as Hitchcock and silent cinema in Britain, the Ealing comedies of the 1950’s, the James Bond Franchise, and contemporary Asian British cinema.
This module is intended to provide you with the essential knowledge and competencies to undertake the academic study of film at university level. The first term provides you with an understanding of the formal and technical composition of films to allow you to undertake detailed analysis of films, from the level of close scrutiny of individual images, and their interrelation with the soundtrack, to the narrative assembly of shots and scenes.
Through the analysis of a range of examples, you will be given the opportunity to become familiar with the key formal and semantic conventions of cinema. The second term aims to provide you with a framework knowledge of world film history. By focusing on a selection of key films and filmmakers, this section of the module will explore historically significant movements and themes within international cinema from the 1960s to the present day.
This term is thematically organized around issues of ideology and realism, and explores the shifting social and political status of cinema during the last century. In the third term you will undertake a practical project, working with a small group to produce a short film.
Core
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Critical Reflections explores a number of key interdisciplinary philosophical and cultural concepts which will enable you to analyse, engage with, and reflect upon artworks in your own discipline. It also allows you to establish a common set of concepts which can be shared by students from all LICA subjects.
The structure of the module consists of six three-week blocks as follows:
Aesthetics
Experience
Post-structuralism
Marx and Post-Marx
Waves of Feminism
Thinking with the Earth (new materialism)
Regular plenary lectures make connections across the arts, and are supplemented by seminars/workshops which allow students to work in their subject groups (art, film, theatre, design) on ideas and examples specifically tailored towards these disciplines.
This core module has two main objectives. Firstly, it is designed to develop further your analytical skills in order to examine individual films in greater detail. Secondly, it is intended to encourage you to understand world cinema in relation to a variety of social, cultural, political and industrial contexts.
The module will explore such issues as the relationship between film form and modes of production (from industrial film-making through to low-budget art film), theories of film style and aesthetics, and the political function of cinema.
The module consists of two interwoven strands, one strand focusing on various modes of American film production, the other exploring films from a number of different national traditions. Across the whole module, you will gain a thorough grasp not only of the historical factors shaping various national and international cinemas, but also of some key critical and theoretical concepts within the field of film studies.
Optional
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This module will enable you to develop a range of graphic skills with the opportunity to approach and represent ideas, issues and experiences in a documentary manner. The module is designed to be relevant to creative practice in Fine Art, Theatre, Film and Design. You will have the opportunity to expand your knowledge and experience of observational and on-site drawing, and develop their learning and experience by engaging in further technical training and by introduction to drawing beyond the studio and 'in the field'. On completion of this module our aim is for you to have significantly developed their knowledge and awareness of drawing and the ability to engage in independent study and develop a substantial personal project for assessment.
The module aims to develop an understanding of historically important European films from the 1950s to the 1980s and the stylistic and historical significance of these films. It will explore the thematic importance of these films and consider the critical debates relating to this period of filmmaking enabling students to develop a critical understanding of the conditions of production, reception and distribution of these films.
The module provides training and experience in visual communication through painting in the broadest sense. Our aim is to provide students with an understanding of painting as an ‘expanded’ and interdisciplinary art form. Weekly workshops will introduce you to the scope of contemporary painting and some of its methods and approaches. You will develop skills through experimentation with a range of traditional and contemporary painting methods, approaches, ideas and equipment. Building on the teaching, you will develop an independent project that extends the language of painting beyond conventional bounds.
This module examines a historical genre that now occupies the economic centre of Hollywood film production. The module focuses centrally on film and comic book aesthetics; on questions of narration and visual depiction in these two related media; on the shifting norms of this film genre in relation to technological change across history; and on the significance and uses of the comic-book film in society. The module develops ideas and skills introduced in the core Film Studies modules taken as part of the film studies and combined degrees.
This third-year course will add to the theoretical, historical and cultural aspects of film investigated in Years 1 and 2, while focusing more closely on the challenging aesthetic and critical debates surrounding the concept of modernity. It will look at films made in the silent era, in post-war Europe and in Britain and the US. Writings on film will be considered in conjunction with viewings of particular films, close analysis of specific filmic techniques and methods, and historical and theoretical approaches to film. The course will also pay attention to the debates of classical and contemporary film theory, feminist approaches and other critical traditions (semiotics, structuralism, formalism, cognitivism). Students will be introduced to key debates in classical and contemporary film theory, with topics exploring the relations between film and art, cinema and politics, cinema and psychoanalysis, and, above all, the question of how films produce meaning(s).
In the Short Film Production module you will develop, produce and complete a short dramatic film. You will be taught and given the opportunity to follow industry standard practices throughout your project. You’ll participate in at least two class productions as both a key role member (roles like Writer/Director, Producer, Cinematographer, Art Director, and Sound Designer/Editor) and a minor role member (roles like Assistant Director, Script Supervisor, Assistant Camera, Gaffer, Grip, Sound Recordist, Boom Operator, and etc.). You’ll keep a production diary outlining your individual contributions, and be given the opportunity to gain real world experience of what working on a film production is like in the various roles. You’ll write up your experiences in an essay critically analysing the production process and outcomes.
You will need to have completed Introduction to Film Studies to take this module.
This module develops your knowledge and skills in fine art thinking and making. The module prepares and encourages you to direct your own research and to develop a self-reliant and independent approach to studio practice.
You will work in your own dedicated studio space with 24/7 access. You will be supported by specialist tutors who are practicing artists. You will belong to a tutor group led by dedicated tutors with expertise in your area of practice.
To support your creative development you will engage in one-to-one tutorials, group tutorials, technical workshops, and peer-feedback. You will also be encouraged to visit exhibitions and attend our visiting artist programme of talks.
This module aims to give students a grounding in “the contemporary” as a key critical concept used in artistic discourses, and provide a number of ways that students can explore and articulate their own contemporaneity. In conversation with cutting edge ideas from art, science, technology and popular culture, the module will enable participants to discuss and identify what they are contemporaries of, how they relate to their own time as artists, citizens and critical writers and what this necessitates in their own practices.
Students will engage in critical discussion of key terms used to define the current moment, such as Anthropocene, Singularity, Post-Truth, and Globalisation, as well as understanding how particular technologies and phenomena, such as distributed and decentralised networks, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering are reshaping the contexts in which the arts are made. These topics are explored through lectures and seminar discussions in which students are encouraged to produce and define their own position and modes for articulating what makes them contemporary.
The module is designed for creative students who wish to use writing and material practice to explore their own relationship to the ecologies, politics, trends, technologies, and aesthetics that typify our experience of the world today.
This module will explore the work of some of the most historically important female film-makers from the 1890s through to the present, considering films from around the globe. The module will examine the significant but often marginalized and obscured roles that women have played in industrial, experimental and avant-garde film production across a spectrum of roles from costume and production designers through to screen-writers, editors and directors. You will be invited to reflect upon the fact that, despite playing key roles in the development of the medium, women continue to be excluded at all levels of film production. The decision by Hollywood star and activist Geena Davis to establish a campaigning ‘Institute on Gender in Media’ is a measure of the urgency of this subject.
The module will engage with revisionist film histories concerned with interrogating the dominant bias of academic and popular histories of the medium; it will also draw on feminist film theory concerned both with a critical understanding of mainstream cinema and the development of politicized women’s cinemas. The module will examine a series of female directors and their work, and each week will be oriented around the screening of a case study film that will be the focus for the seminar. An example of directors included is Alice Guy-Blaché, Dorothy Arzner, Leni Riefenstahl, Ida Lupino, Laura Mulvey, Mira Nair, Kathryn Bigelow, Marziyeh Meshkini, Lynne Ramsay.
Assessment is by a combination of coursework essay and exam.
Core
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In your third year you will study at one of our international partner universities. This will help you to develop your global outlook, expand your professional network, and gain cultural and personal skills. It is also an opportunity to gain a different perspective on your major subject through studying the subject in another country.
You will choose specialist modules relating to your degree and also have the opportunity to study other modules from across the host university.
Places at overseas partners vary each year and have historically included Australia, USA, Canada, Europe and Asia.
During your degree you’ll spend a year as a registered student at one of our approved partner universities in North America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand or Europe.
Core
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This module supports you to develop your own distinctive voice as an artist. Our aim is for you to take increasing responsibility for the creative and conceptual direction of your artwork. You will work in your own dedicated studio space with 24/7 access and be supported by specialist tutors who are practicing artists. You will belong to a tutor group led by dedicated tutors with expertise in your area of practice. Teaching is delivered through one-to-one tutorials, group work and peer feedback. You will also be encouraged to visit exhibitions and attend our visiting artist programme of talks. The module culminates in a final end of year public exhibition.
The size of your studio practice module depends on your degree programme. Singe honours students study 60 or 75 credits, combined honours students must take at least 30 credits.
This module allows you to undertake a major independent research project on a topic of your choice, presented in the form of a dissertation or a practice-based project and an essay. The module is taught through lectures focused on research skills and one-to-one supervision. Upon completion, you will be able to demonstrate your ability to undertake a major project that includes conducting research, engaging in a sustained critical analysis of relevant texts, building an argument and applying this to practice.
Optional
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This module centres on the artistically and politically adventurous phase of American filmmaking circa 1967-1979. Typically topics studied include:
Introduction – Hollywood breakdown (Easy Rider, Medium Cool)
The future of allusion: New Hollywood’s nostalgic mode (The Godfather)
Popular feminism (Klute, Woman Under the Influence)
Politics and conspiracy (The Parallax View, All The President’s Men)
Exploitation cinema II: horror/body genres (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre)
Blockbuster cinema and the franchise film (Star Wars)
The end of the New (Apocalypse Now)
This module looks at the many ways in which artists engage with writing, texts, language, and books and to understand art writing's relation to and difference from art criticism, including art writing as art criticism and when art criticism becomes art. It traces the relation between the visual and the literary in poetry, and examines the deconstruction of language, writing and the book and 'conceptual writing'. There will be a focus on artists who use writing and language in the gallery including Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Ed Ruscha, Lawrence Wiener, John Latham, and Xu Bing, and the use of text, writing and language in computer and digital art, from early experiments in algorithmic mark-making to online artworks. Other areas to be studied include autofiction, fictioning and Glitch Poetics. The module also examines the future of art and writing, especially in the light of AI writing systems such as GPT-3.
This practical fine art focused module will introduce the skills and sensitivities needed to work outside the studio through interactions with people, places, and technologies. The module introduces you to the way that current fine art practitioners employ a wide range of strategies for such interaction. You will work through practical projects and critical reflection. The course will begin with an art historical grounding for this area of practice. You will then experiment and test out new ways of working in a variety of locations and situations such as: in the rural or urban landscape, in the virtual online world, or in a social space such as a cafe. We will explore a range of processes such as conversation, performance, video, movement and digital interaction.
Throughout the module you will build a range of skills and knowledge of technologies, for example: practical considerations in working ‘off-site’ (responding to and researching a place, collaborating with the public, gaining permission to work in specific sites); digital tools for working with networks and strategies and sensitivities for working with people (ethics, interviews, collaborations etc).
This module explores Hong Kong cinema from the mid-1980s up to the present – an era whose beginning witnesses the international breakthrough of a new wave of local filmmakers, and which goes on to encompass the early 1990s’ production surge, the 1997 handover to mainland China, the crippling economic crisis, and the outbreak of the SARS virus. The module will give you the opportunity to develop an understanding of a number of basic industrial, aesthetic, social and cultural trends marking Hong Kong films in the contemporary era. These include the emergence and impact of independent production; the rise of ‘high-concept’ filmmaking; the movement toward pan-Asian co-productions; the importance and cross-marketing of star performers and local musical traditions such as Cantopop; the popularity of genres like the swordplay film; and aesthetic tendencies such as episodic plotting and the narrative ‘thematisation’ of politics and identity. Emphasis will be placed not only on representative mainstream product, but also on the emergence of a distinct Hong Kong art cinema, whose presence and success on the international festival circuit has brought artistic credibility to a predominantly popular cinema, and which has heralded the arrival of a fresh wave of local ‘auteur’ filmmakers.
This module provides an opportunity for students to develop an understanding of the ways in which creative practitioners produce and deliver their work. It will provide an overview of the challenges faced by freelance practitioners, producers and small cultural companies within the creative industries. You will also develop a working understanding of the key management and enterprise skills involved in delivering creative projects. Working in groups you will put your learning into practice through the delivery of your own live creative arts project. This will enable you to understand the skills, knowledge, attributes and behaviours relevant for employment in the arts and creative industries.
The module will be taught through workshops which examine the methods, process and approaches in drawing that are at the cutting edge of contemporary fine art drawing practice and at the boundaries of other disciplines. The workshops provide knowledge, skills, and opportunities to test and try approaches. This learning will be developed through independently researched work. This independent work is documented in a sketchbook and extended at the end of the syllabus to provide a final major project.
The Experimental Cinema module introduces you to the non-mainstream, avant-garde, modes of production and the key movements and practices since the 1920s. You will be given the opportunity to study the theoretical concepts of historical and contemporary avant-garde movements and practices and witness the different ways artists and filmmakers have challenged the mainstream narrative and stylistic conventions. Throughout this module you will look at important figures in the development of experimental film aesthetics such as Man Ray, Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Michael Snow, Chantal Akerman as well as some lesser known, emerging contemporary experimental filmmakers.
The first half of the module provides a conceptual and historical overview of avant-garde filmmaking and the second half will focus on contemporary debates and the institutional shift in experimental film production with the rise of digital technology. As well as having the opportunity to develop an understanding of experimental cinema through reading and writing research papers, you will have a chance to engage with the formal and technical aspects of making an experimental film through practice-based assignments.
You will need to have completed Short Film Production or Documentary Film Practice in order to take this module.
This module covers topics such as: the infrastructures and locations of cinema; the evolution of film exhibition and distribution; film festivals in a global context; the role of film archives and cinematheques; film criticism; digital film cultures and networks of informal distribution.
Students develop a comprehensive understanding of cinema as a socio-cultural institution, by considering film in terms of circulation, reception, and heritage. This approach entails a focus on the role of mediators (i.e. programmers, distributors, critics) and locations (i.e movie theatres, film festivals, archives) in shaping the consumption and preservation of film.
The module provides historical and analytical skills to understand the evolution of film cultures from modernity to the contemporary digital age. This holistic perspective is achieved by combining theoretical components with the discussion of case studies from a variety of cultural contexts and locations (e.g. the introduction of cinema theatres in colonial Nigeria, the multiplex in India, the birth of film festivals in Europe and their contemporary role in the promotion of Latin American and Middle Eastern cinema).
Students develop skills throughout the module by collectively managing and producing content for a blog expanding on the topics discussed in class. The weekly updates will be developed and discussed at seminars, and peer-assessed on a routine basis. In order to articulate their personal contribution to the blog, each student writes a short reflective piece on their experience, as well as an individual essay on a case study of their choice.
This module offers a broad overview of the history of the musical genre in cinema. It begins by examining the use of sound in silent cinema before focusing on the original success of musicals with the arrival of synchronised sound in 1927. The module then tracks the success of movie musicals from the 1930s-1950s, with particular focus on Hollywood successes of MGM, Busby Berkeley, the Astaire-Rogers cycle and the emergence of the self-reflexive musical. Elements of the Hollywood musical in the 1960s and beyond are then studied, with a focus on the importance of the musical soundtrack in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and other films. The module will also examine other traditions where the Musical has been significant, such as India and France. In addition to this, aspects of race, gender and sexuality in the movie musical will be discussed. Some recent Hollywood successes (such as La La Land [2016] or The Greatest Showman [2017]) are studied towards the end of the module in the light of the Musical tradition
This module offers an introduction to the broad area of silent cinema and to a range of critical approaches to this rich area of study. You will have the opportunity to view and analyse a number of important films. We will also explore a number of critical questions raised by this material with regard to the writing and study of histories of cinema (and popular culture in general). We will examine the relationships between technology and form, the economics of film production, distribution and reception, the relationship between cinema and national identity, the social and cultural impact of new (entertainment) media and the study of cinema audiences.
‘Transgressive Cinema’ is a practice-based module that aims to broaden students’ understanding of film as a form of political enquiry. The module introduces students to critical practices in film, video and expanded cinema that favour process over the end-product. Among the key questions the module addresses are the following: How can film go beyond describing and critiquing the world “as is” and constitute the critique formally? What are the political implications of a film’s formal construction? How do we identify legacies of colonialism in filmic construction and how do we challenge them through creatives devices that transgressive cinema offers? How do we problematise the dominant forms of spectatorship in film practice?
So, while these questions involve rigorous thinking, in practice the module offers a platform where playful experimentations are encouraged. Bringing critical thinking and making into focus, the module invites students to re-examine the dominant aesthetic and narrative conventions of the film/video medium and explore formal elements and their political implications in theory and by practice.
Over the course of this module, students will engage in topics such as: - What is "transgressive cinema" (historically and in recent practices) - Materialist film practices in Britain and the wider European context (1965-1985) - Challenging the perception of language: use of voice, narration, and text as image - Identity politics and video - Queer practices - Performing to camera - Camera-less films - Expanded Cinema - Multiple screens - Abstract film and video. These topics will be explored by students via watching the assigned films, discussing the relevant texts in relation to films and responding to series of practical briefs/tasks to experiment with those ideas.
Fees and funding
Our annual tuition fee is set for a 12-month session, starting in the October of your year of study.
You will need to buy some art materials during your course. Materials and equipment are available to use during some classes, and the departmental art shop sells materials to students at cost price. We will send you information about materials and equipment before you arrive so that you know what to bring with you and what you might need to buy during your course.
There may be extra costs related to your course for items such as books, stationery, printing, photocopying, binding and general subsistence on trips and visits. Following graduation, you may need to pay a subscription to a professional body for some chosen careers.
Specific additional costs for studying at Lancaster are listed below.
College fees
Lancaster is proud to be one of only a handful of UK universities to have a collegiate system. Every student belongs to a college, and all students pay a small college membership fee which supports the running of college events and activities. Students on some distance-learning courses are not liable to pay a college fee.
For students starting in 2025, the fee is £40 for undergraduates and research students and £15 for students on one-year courses.
Computer equipment and internet access
To support your studies, you will also require access to a computer, along with reliable internet access. You will be able to access a range of software and services from a Windows, Mac, Chromebook or Linux device. For certain degree programmes, you may need a specific device, or we may provide you with a laptop and appropriate software - details of which will be available on relevant programme pages. A dedicated IT support helpdesk is available in the event of any problems.
The University provides limited financial support to assist students who do not have the required IT equipment or broadband support in place.
Study abroad courses
In addition to travel and accommodation costs, while you are studying abroad, you will need to have a passport and, depending on the country, there may be other costs such as travel documents (e.g. VISA or work permit) and any tests and vaccines that are required at the time of travel. Some countries may require proof of funds.
Placement and industry year courses
In addition to possible commuting costs during your placement, you may need to buy clothing that is suitable for your workplace and you may have accommodation costs. Depending on the employer and your job, you may have other costs such as copies of personal documents required by your employer for example.
The fee that you pay will depend on whether you are considered to be a home or international student. Read more about how we assign your fee status.
Home fees are subject to annual review, and may be liable to rise each year in line with UK government policy. International fees (including EU) are reviewed annually and are not fixed for the duration of your studies. Read more about fees in subsequent years.
We will charge tuition fees to Home undergraduate students on full-year study abroad/work placements in line with the maximum amounts permitted by the Department for Education. The current maximum levels are:
Students studying abroad for a year: 15% of the standard tuition fee
Students taking a work placement for a year: 20% of the standard tuition fee
International students on full-year study abroad/work placements will be charged the same percentages as the standard International fee.
Please note that the maximum levels chargeable in future years may be subject to changes in Government policy.
Scholarships and bursaries
You will be automatically considered for our main scholarships and bursaries when you apply, so there's nothing extra that you need to do.
You may be eligible for the following funding opportunities, depending on your fee status:
Unfortunately no scholarships and bursaries match your selection, but there are more listed on scholarships and bursaries page.
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We also have other, more specialised scholarships and bursaries - such as those for students from specific countries.
The information on this site relates primarily to 2025/2026 entry to the University and every effort has been taken to ensure the information is correct at the time of publication.
The University will use all reasonable effort to deliver the courses as described, but the University reserves the right to make changes to advertised courses. In exceptional circumstances that are beyond the University’s reasonable control (Force Majeure Events), we may need to amend the programmes and provision advertised. In this event, the University will take reasonable steps to minimise the disruption to your studies. If a course is withdrawn or if there are any fundamental changes to your course, we will give you reasonable notice and you will be entitled to request that you are considered for an alternative course or withdraw your application. You are advised to revisit our website for up-to-date course information before you submit your application.
More information on limits to the University’s liability can be found in our legal information.
Our Students’ Charter
We believe in the importance of a strong and productive partnership between our students and staff. In order to ensure your time at Lancaster is a positive experience we have worked with the Students’ Union to articulate this relationship and the standards to which the University and its students aspire. View our Charter and other policies.
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