Film Studies and Creative Arts
Film studies and creative arts is a combination that develops critical understanding of cinema as a cultural form alongside creative practice in the visual and performative arts. At the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, this BA includes a foundation year, making it accessible to a wider range of students while drawing on SOAS's distinctive expertise in the arts and cultures of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The combination is particularly rich at a university where the cultural contexts for both film and the arts extend far beyond the Western canon.
The film studies strand develops your capacity to analyse cinema as a medium, examining how films construct meaning through the interaction of image, sound, narrative, and editing, and situating specific films and film movements within their historical, social, and cultural contexts. At SOAS, this analysis is informed by a global perspective: you will engage with cinema from across the world, and the critical frameworks you develop will be tested against a diversity of traditions that include Indian cinema, East Asian film, African cinema, and the cinemas of the Arab world alongside the Hollywood and European traditions more commonly studied in UK film courses. The creative arts strand develops your practical and conceptual engagement with art-making in a range of media, encouraging experimentation and critical reflection on what art is and what it can do.
Graduates of film studies and creative arts programmes work in the film industry, arts organisations, cultural journalism and criticism, curating and programming, teaching and education, arts administration, and the creative industries more broadly. The distinctive global perspective that SOAS's programme provides is particularly valuable in careers involving engagement with non-Western film and cultural traditions. Some graduates go on to postgraduate study in film studies, curatorship, arts management, or creative practice.
Others move into journalism, communications, or policy roles connected to culture and the creative economy. The combination of critical depth and creative practice that the programme develops provides a versatile foundation for careers where cultural intelligence and analytical rigour are valued.