INI 115Y is designed as an introduction to an interrelated set of approaches to film study, all of them defined by their attention to the filmic text. The course begins with an extended examination of the elements of film form, principally style (mise-en-scène, cinematographic properties, editing, sound) and narrative (structure and narration). This portion of the course will provide students with the necessary terminology to analyse films, and will also fortify their analytical skills. After students have an initial grounding in the principles of film form, we will examine how different types of film operate formally. In this section of the course, we will look at a few types of film which typically do not depend upon narrative (i.e. the documentary and the avant-garde), before exploring other issues pertaining to narrative film in subsequent units. In particular, we will investigate analytical approaches to Hollywood films of the studio era, with a concentration on how the critical categories of genre and author have proven relevant. Finally, we will consider several alternatives to Hollywood practice, taking up questions of film’s representational strategies (particularly of gender and race). INI 115Y is conceived of as the introductory course in the Cinema Studies Programme, and is designed primarily to provide students with a grasp of the fundamentals of film analysis. It also serves as a survey of some of the central issues which have concerned film analysis, especially those not explicitly addressed in the two other core courses following INI 115 in the programme (i.e. INI 212, Film History, and INI 214, Film Theory)