MA Film Practice (Online)

Throughout the MA Film Practice (Online) course, you're encouraged to question and debate established and mainstream modes of film practice. Supported by bespoke lectures, group seminars, and one-to-one tutorials, you'll explore the overlapping histories and iterations of film and moving images. Through guided readings and screenings, you're encouraged to think critically about their own and others' work and to consider how through specific approaches, subjects, theories, and methodologies, film practice can engage with our contemporary world. You'll have opportunities to work independently and collaboratively through projects considering how films and moving image works are developed, funded, presented, and disseminated.

MA Film Practice (Online) enables you to actively expand your existing knowledge and approaches to film and moving images. It welcomes applicants not only from film and moving image backgrounds, but also from individuals with experience in related and complementary fields, including photography, performance, contemporary art, and sound work.

The course culminates in each student creating a substantial short film or moving image work accompanied by a practice research document that critically reflects on, and articulates, the research, development, and making of their final MA work.

The MA Film Practice (Online) course at AUB is taught by practising filmmakers, academics and moving image artists. The series of course units enable students to expand and refine their individual film practices through bespoke lectures, practical assignments, seminars and group work which combine experimentation with critical reflection. These culminate in a final longer unit in which student realise their thesis projects.

In this introductory unit, we’ll help you evaluate your experiences and knowledge to further inform your creative development. You’ll position your practice, establish or reinforce a critically informed grounding in filmmaking, and start a reflective journal practice to support your studies.

During this unit, you’ll develop new working methods and specialist techniques to enhance your practice. You’ll consider the contextual factors that shape your filmmaking and get to experiment with different creative approaches to strengthen your practical abilities.

This unit will help you gain the expertise necessary to analyse film as an art form. We’ll explore different styles and forms of moving imagery, the history of creative techniques, contemporary developments in film theory, philosophical perspectives, and more.

Together, we’ll look at the challenges and possibilities of performance and cooperation in filmmaking. This unit will encourage you to think about how your practice involves and relates to other people to expand your understanding of diverse creative techniques and produce culturally relevant work.

Co-lab is an interdisciplinary unit that focuses on discovering collaborative ways of working and exploring new areas or creative approaches outside your comfort zone. You’ll learn how to engage with ideas and processes that are unfamiliar to you and consider how your work is impacted by the contribution of others.

This unit will help you understand how to apply research and specialist practical techniques to inform and support the construction of narrative in your filmmaking. We’ll investigate key concepts within film studies to help you consider structure, form and meaning in your work.

This unit explores the multiplicities of Film Industries including cinemas, gallery screenings and film festivals. It explores networks, organisations and practitioners involved in creating, screening and distributing film and moving image works.

In this unit, we’ll focus on important issues around representation and ethics in filmmaking. You’ll be challenged to critically consider who you choose to work with at each stage of your film practice, how your present them, and the perspective from which your work is created.

The Thesis Film Proposal unit will guide your through the development process of your final project, giving you an opportunity to create and present your ideas and plans. Throughout the unit, we’ll support you in researching, conceptualising, refining, and planning your project.

As the final part of the course, this unit focuses on the creation of your individual, research-informed project: a short film or moving image work and a practice-research document that communicates your processes and critically reflects on your own film practice.