Cinema Studies

The Cinema Studies Certificate of Achievement offers students a broad overview 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 design, 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. The nine-unit certificate develops students’ critical writing, visual and analytical skills, and serves as a stackable certificate for the Associate in Science Degree for Transfer in Film, Television and Electronic Media and the Associate of Arts in Cinema Studies Degree. The certificate complements majors in the arts, media, communications, 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. Write critically and analytically about motion pictures and their social contexts, including how motion pictures reflect, and contribute to, representations of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and nationality past and present.