Film & Television Studies
Film and television studies is a discipline that takes the moving image seriously as an artistic, commercial, and cultural form. Films and television programmes are among the most consumed cultural products in the world, shaping how billions of people understand stories, relationships, history, and themselves. Studying them rigorously means developing both the critical vocabulary to analyse how they work visually, narratively, and culturally, and the contextual knowledge to situate them within film history, industry structures, and the societies that produce and consume them.
At Aberystwyth University, this degree with integrated foundation year combines rigorous theoretical and critical study with practical components. You will explore the history of cinema and television, the techniques of editing, cinematography, and mise-en-scene, and the ways in which genre, representation, and ideology operate within moving image texts. The practical strand allows you to develop skills in filmmaking and screen production, giving you experience of the creative and technical processes that produce the films and programmes you study critically.
The integrated foundation year provides an additional year of preparation before the main degree begins, building the academic and creative skills needed for degree-level study in this field. The programme runs over four years in total.
Aberystwyth's Welsh location gives the degree a distinctive context, with connections to Welsh broadcasting and a bilingual cultural environment that enriches your understanding of how screen cultures operate in smaller national and linguistic communities.
Graduates from film and television studies degrees move into careers across the screen industries and beyond. Common paths include production roles in film, television, and digital media, as well as film criticism and journalism, programming and distribution, education, and cultural policy. The analytical and communication skills the degree develops are valued in marketing, communications, and media management.
Postgraduate study in film studies, media production, or screen arts is a natural route for those wishing to specialise further.