European Film and Media Studies (EFMS) – (M.A.)

The master’s programme in European Film and Media Studies develops theoretical and historic paradigms of film and media that conceive and describe the aesthetic, social and technological changes as processes of culture and cultural sense in a unifying Europe. EFMS stimulate the historic and theoretical reason during interaction with media, they intervene in the discussion about media and their design and they thus contribute to the acquirement of media competence. The specific profiles of the participating institutes and faculties in general and the EFMS programme’s concept in particular tend to encompass independent conceptual thinkers with innovation competence.

An analytic reflexion on the aesthetics of film and media and their theoretical or (media-) philosophical dimension of sense, respectively, is aimed at by all three universities. Focussing on film studies, EFMS treat questions of film history, theory and practice, both referred to research literature and the object in question, from a European and Anglo-American perspective. Furthermore, consolidation and development of scientific skills as conception, methods and research are very important targets of the Master in EFMS as well. Especially, national German and French cinema, the European film and media history and specifically German media theory are as much part of the studies’ outline as courses on documentary film and photography.

The special contiguousness of education and research in Weimar, Lyon and Utrecht derives from their particular common mode of conception and thinking of “mediality” in cinema and of examination of different forms of inscription by the cinema itself and throughout its movies. Further important characteristics of the cooperative master’s programme are reflexions on the intermedial twist of different scenic arts and on the term of “medium” and its history as well as the extensive discussion about mediality and intermediality itself.