Arts and humanities at Birkbeck are ranked fifth best in London, 18th in the UK and 87th globally in the 2019 Times Higher Education World University Rankings by Subject. Teaching and supervision are delivered by leading film and media academics, including Drs Mike Allen, Janet McCabe, Andrew Asibong, Silke Arnold-de Simine, Dorota Ostrowska, Emma Sandon and Michael Temple, and Professors Laura Mulvey, Ian Christie and Catherine Grant. The research expertise of our academics is in cinema history, film aesthetics, television industry and form, and contemporary and future new media opportunities inform every aspect of the programme. The award-winning Birkbeck Cinema is central to this course. The 70-seat cinema is equipped with 35mm and state-of-the-art DVD projection. The Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI) runs a busy, intellectually stimulating programme of events, including conferences, screenings and film-related events of all kinds. You will have the opportunity to participate in and attend the Essay Film Festival, jointly run by BIMI and the ICA, with free admission to events hosted at Birkbeck.

To be considered for direct entry to a Master's degree at Birkbeck, you will normally be required to have successfully completed a Bakalavr/Specialist Diploma from a recognised university with a minimum final grade of 3.5 for programmes requiring a UK 2:2 As part of the application process, you are required to complete a 700-1000-word written exercise by choosing a film or television programme which you have recently seen and explaining why you found it innovative.