Film & Visual Culture and Philosophy & Ethics
Film and visual culture combined with philosophy and ethics is a degree that asks you to engage with the moving image and broader visual world through both creative practice and rigorous philosophical inquiry. Film and visual culture examines how films, photographs, digital images and other visual media are made, how they create meaning, how they shape attitudes and cultural life and how they can be analysed and understood as art forms and social forces. Philosophy and ethics brings to this combination the tradition of careful, structured reasoning about fundamental questions, including the ethics of representation, the philosophy of aesthetics, the nature of the image and the moral dimensions of storytelling and visual culture.
At Liverpool Hope University this four-year, full-time programme includes a foundation year, providing a supported entry into the degree for those who would benefit from additional preparation. The programme encourages you to work creatively in film, photography and animation as well as to develop your critical and theoretical understanding of visual media. You will engage with film theory, the history of cinema, aesthetics, moral philosophy and the questions that arise when philosophical thinking is applied to the visual world and the media that dominate contemporary culture.
The course includes a sandwich year, a year abroad and work placements, giving you direct experience in creative and cultural settings and an international perspective on film and visual culture.
Graduates pursue careers in film and video production, arts administration, cultural programming, journalism and criticism, education, publishing, community arts, social media and content creation, and the broader creative and cultural industries. Philosophy and ethics training adds depth that is valued in roles requiring careful reasoning about representation, communication and the impact of media. Many graduates also continue to postgraduate study in film, philosophy, media studies or visual arts.