Teaching projects
Research-Informed Teaching Project: Light Readings Online
A website was setup to run concurrently with the MA Film Making module, FKM409 Light Readings: Experimental Film & Video in semester 2, 2008/09.
Light Readings Online functions as an online resource where students taking the module can follow up references made in class, read articles, watch experimental films online and see a calendar of relevant screenings and events happening around London. The website has its own Twitter feed that students can subscribe to that updates them with announcements (deadlines, tutorials, screenings, events etc) on their mobile devices.
The website is easily updated weekly by the module leader, adding new material and links for students to pursue after each workshop.
Light Readings Online is regularly used in class to support and embellish discussion of key filmmakers' work. The response to the website from students taking the module has been very positive.
Abbe Fletcher is module leader for FKM409: Light Readings, the accompanying website is by Mata Ayoub.
Research-Informed Teaching Project: George Lucas and New Hollywood
This RIT project takes the form of a website designed and developed by Mata Ayoub. It is based on aspects of Will Brooker's BFI monograph (forthcoming 2009) on the first Star Wars film of 1977, and supports the MA Film Studies module New Hollywood: From the Mainstream to the Margins.
The monograph examines the way George Lucas, in keeping with the New Hollywood mode of pastiche and homage to both US and European film history, drew on earlier forms such as classical Hollywood, documentary, formalist art cinema and European modernist cinema in constructing his 1977 space opera.
The website provides appropriate film clips for comparison, explanatory notes drawing links between Lucas' Star Wars and its influences, and a forum for discussion. It serves as a dynamic teaching aid for a specific session of the MA module, but also as an online exhibit and archive for students to consult and explore independently.
