Cinema Studies

The Cinema Studies Associate of Arts Degree offers students an in-depth study of the history, aesthetics, production and social relevance of this major art and communication form. Students learn to analyze audiovisual language including cinematography, editing and sound, and how meaning is created through narrative and genre. Courses explore how motion pictures reflect, and contribute to, representations of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and nationality, past and present. Film production courses offer students hands-on experience with the production process and a means to deepen their understanding of film language and aesthetics. Through completing the eighteen-credit program, students develop critical writing, visual communication and analytical skills that provide a foundation for university study across a range of disciplines in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

Learning Outcome(s):

1. Demonstrate audiovisual literacy through using film terminology to analyze the aesthetics and meaning of screenwriting, mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound, narrative, documentary and genre in a motion picture.
2. Critically analyze motion pictures as an industry, art form, technology and socio-cultural artifact past and present.
3. Employ basic techniques of film making, including script writing, camera use, lighting and editing.
4. Write critically and analytically about motion pictures and their social contexts.