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Maria San Filippo \ msanfilippo@uarts.edu \ 215.717.6276
Assistant Professor and Director, Film + Media Studies

Description

The Bachelor of Arts in Film + Media Studies provides a unique opportunity for intensive study of film and modern media by combining analytical coursework in the history and aesthetics of cinema and allied art forms with studio instruction in film, writing, web design, and related creative practices. The program thus unfolds along two tracks: a sequence of courses exploring the history and practice of film and related media critically, theoretically, and aesthetically, and a series of creative studios that may be augmented through additional elective coursework in screenwriting, film, or animation.

Studio requirements for the major include the School of Film core courses in video production and the art of cinema as well as courses in editing, screenwriting, cinematography, and web design. Liberal Arts courses in the history and theory of cinematic form and meaning are taken throughout all four years, with particular attention to theoretical and aesthetic analysis in the junior year. The program culminates in a senior research thesis on a topic proposed by the student and supervised by faculty.

Students may devise multiple paths through these two tracks in their selection of elective coursework; indeed, they are expected to do so, and the design of the program is meant to maximize student choice and autonomy. Thus a student graduating with a Film + Media Studies degree will be both a scholar of film and media arts who has experienced the making of art first-hand and an artist whose work is enriched by a profound intellectual understanding of cinematic arts.

Program Objectives

Students graduating with a Bachelors of Arts in Film + Media Studies will:

• read and interpret the cinematic arts in a sophisticated and informed fashion and with a conscious eye to their technical, aesthetic, historic, and cultural significance;
• discuss and debate narrative, experimental, and documentary live action and animated film; television; screenwriting; and related media and other arts in a scholarly, intelligent, and original manner;
• be able to propose, research, write, and present a thesis concerning film and media arts, their history and aesthetics, and the technical processes of making film, television, and related work;
• create and write films that reflect upon and synthesize what they have learned in both lecture and studio environments; and
• understand the range of cinema arts, from industrially organized projects to independently produced pieces to the work of individual artists.

Program Requirements (121.5 credits)