Film Studies

Suggested reading for Film Studies students

While you don't need a background in Film Studies, you might want to familiarise yourself with some texts and films in preparation for your degree.

Below is a sample reading and viewing list, which you may encounter in your Film Studies modules at Leicester. Enjoy!

Books

  • Villarejo: Film Studies: The Basics
  • Turner: The Film Cultures Reader
  • Hayward: Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts
  • Bordwell and Thompson: Film Art: An Introduction (10th edition)
  • Corrigan and Barry: The Film Experience: An Introduction (3rd edition)
  • Hjort and Mackenzie: Cinema and Nation
  • Dennison and Lim: Remapping World Cinema: Identity Culture and Politics in Film
  • Chapman: Cinemas of the World: Film and Society from 1895 to the Present
  • McDonald and Wasko: The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry

Films

5 Hollywood Classics

  • Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1942)
  • Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)
  • Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955)
  • Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
  • The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

5 European Classics

  • Bicycle Thieves (Italy, Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
  • A bout de souffle (France, Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
  • Cleo de 5 à 7 (France, Agnes Varda, 1962)
  • Don’t Look Now (UK/Italy, Nicholas Roeg, 1973)
  • Fear Eats the Soul (West Germany, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)

5 East Asian Classics

  • The Goddess (China, Cai Chusheng, 1934)
  • Tokyo Story (Japan, Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
  • A Touch of Zen (Taiwan/Hong Kong, King Hu, 1975)
  • A City of Sadness (Taiwan, Hou Hisao-hsien, 1989)
  • Poetry (South Korea, Lee Chang-dong, 2010)

5 World Cinema Classics

  • Man with a Movie Camera (USSR, Sergei Eisenstein, 1929)
  • The Battle of Algiers (Algeria/Italy, Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
  • Where is the friend's home? (Iran, Abbas Kiarostami, 1987)
  • City of God (Brazil, Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund, 2002)
  • Mustang (France/Turkey, Deniz Gamze Ergüven, 2015)

Back to top
MENU