Westminster's Film Studies Program

Why Study Film at Westminster?

The Film Studies program at Westminster offers students a distinctive and important element of Liberal Education. Film blends the arts of words, pictures, theatre and music; studying these elements builds awareness of how film uses narrative and rhetoric to tell stories and influence beliefs. The ability to think critically about film helps us develop a critical awareness of our world and how it is represented.

The program includes core courses in both film literacy and scholarship. Students will explore the interdisciplinary potential of film, investigating both the elements that comprise film as well as film’s relation to cultures. Ultimately students will be prepared to:

• Respond to film with active interpretation and analysis, rather than being acted upon passively.
• Understand the way film incorporates other arts and is distinct from them; how it influences other arts and is influenced by them.
• Understand the uses of film – to document, persuade, entertain, represent, and expand our means of representation and ways of understanding.

The Westminster Difference:

• Benefit from creative partnerships with film-makers and film educators, in the studio industry and independent productions; including guest lecturers, sponsorships of film screenings, and production visits

• The program includes emphases on the uniqueness of film as well as its relations to other fields, so it is both a specific field of study and an interdisciplinary one.

• The faculty includes scholars from the arts, humanities and social sciences.

• Filmmakers are often invited to campus to present their films and meet with students.