Since their stunning 1984 debut Blood Simple, the Coen Brothers have gone on to become one of the most acclaimed film making partnerships of all-time, with a career spanning 17 features and a hit TV show (Fargo). In this four week course we take an in-depth look at the work of this unique writer-director-producer team, from the noir crime-dramas (Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, The Man who Wasn’t There) to the zany caper-comedies (Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy, Intolerable Cruelty, The Lady Killers, Burn After Reading, O Brother Where Art Thou), the Hollywood parodies (Barton Fink, Hail Caesar!), the bitter-sweet character studies (Inside Llewyn Davis, A Serious Man, The Big Lebowski) and the revisionist westerns (True Grit, No Country for Old Men). Topics for discussion will include the Coen’s dazzling cinematics, their brilliant genre-bending, and their astute character writing.

Each session includes a presentation/lecture followed by a tutorial where discussion is encouraged. Advance viewing is optional; select scenes and montages will be shown during weekly sessions.

Course tutor Jon Towlson is a film critic for Starburst Magazine and the author of Subversive Horror Cinema: Countercultural Messages of Films from Frankenstein to the Present (McFarland, 2014); Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Constellations) (Auteur/Columbia University Press, 2016) and The Turn to Gruesomeness in American Horror Films, 1931-1936 (McFarland, 2016).

Tickets available from box office on 0871 9025726, or website.