Film and Media Courses

Fall 2023 Courses

FMST-1100: Gateway to Film and Media Studies (Benson-Allott)
In our Gateway to the program, students encounter film theory and media history. You will learn the basics of what it means to be a Film and Media scholar and how Film and Media has shaped our society across history. Readings and screenings will complement creative assignments in ARTS 1181 (Intro to Filmmaking) while written work will given students a chance to reflect on their experience as readers and spectators.

FMST-1181: Introduction to Filmmaking (Bruno)
Intro to Filmmaking is designed to develop both technical and artistic skills using Mac computers as a creative tool to create short movies. In every class you will be introduced to new ideas and technical issues. These ideas will be developed in assignments and class critiques.

FMST-2247: Experimental & Avant Garde Cinema (Sitney)

FMST-3355: Documentary Film: History & Theory (Sitney)
This course surveys the history of documentary film (technological, stylistic, thematic, etc.), while taking up the theoretical debates around cinematic claims to truth and representations of reality. Students will examine how the documentary genre differs from other kinds of filmmaking, how documentaries make ‘truth claims’, and how these claims influence the ways in which these films are received and circulated. Beginning with the actualities of the Lumière Brothers, students will be exposed to multiple genres (e.g. ethnographic, cinéma vérité, experimental, self-reflexive) and filmmakers (e.g. Robert Flaherty, Frederick Wiseman, Albert Maysles, Errol Morris) while addressing the variety of arenas (e.g. scientific, civic, commercial) in which documentary has appeared.

FMST-4970: Capstone I Film and Media Studies (Sitney)
In the Capstone course, senior FMST students will engage with key ideas and texts in Film and Media Studies through close critical reading and creative theorizing. Together, we will revisit aspects of your learning in the Gateway course and Introduction to Filmmaking, retracing your intellectual genealogies, identifying and returning to questions and approaches that have been important to you. You will develop signature, culminating projects in workshop formats, regularly pitching ideas, providing and receiving feedback, and refining and developing your ideas. By the end of the fall term, you will have engaged important critical questions in Film and Media Studies, connected questions and learning from your FMST curriculum, developed proposals for final projects, and planned effectively to carry out your capstone work during the spring semester. Your learning in FMST-4970 will continue in FMST-4971 in the spring and will conclude with your final presentation of and reflection on your capstone work.

Spring 2024 Courses

FMST-2235: Cultures of Artificial Intelligence (Perlow)
The stories we tell about artificial intelligence reflect our fantasies and anxieties about powerful technology, as well as our beliefs about the nature of intelligence and consciousness. If computers one day surpass human intelligence, will the machines enslave or kill us all, or will they help us to achieve world peace, stop climate change, and live in luxury? This class explores the history of intelligent machines, both real and imagined. We’ll ask how films (Her, Ex Machina, Ghost in the Shell) and fictions (by Kazuo Ishiguro, Isaac Asimov, and others) about artificial intelligence reflect our technological hopes and fears. Alongside these narratives, we’ll read scholarship about the dangers and potentials of artificial intelligence, philosophies of human and artificial consciousness, and studies of how machine learning has already begun to transform human life. We also will experiment with existing AI technologies, including a platform that helped me write this paragraph.

FMST-2281: Intermediate Filmmaking (Bruno)
In this course, students will continue to work on the fundamentals of filmmaking with an emphasis on directing and screenwriting in the short, fiction format. Some of the goals of the course will be to further develop general production skills and hone students’ critical eye towards film narrative. Classes include workshops and lectures along with screenings and discussions of seminal film works. Students will create short film projects from idea to end product through individual and collaborative exercises and critique of their works-in-progress.

FMST-3100: International Horror of Cinema (Benson-Allott)
Many scholars, filmmakers, and skeptics have asked why people want their movies to scare them, which is an interesting but perhaps unanswerable question. This course accepts the enduring popularity of horror movies and asks instead what horror is and how movies horrify us. We often think of horror as a genre, but what is the effect—or field of sensation—that this genre names? What do we feel while watching horror movies, and how do different film traditions seek to elicit those responses in us? To answer such questions, we will examine some of the most effective scary movies from around the world, studying the history of film technology and film theory to unpack the various mechanical and cultural components that contribute to horror in films.

FMST-3350: Film Festival Studies (Sitney)
Through an immersive learning experience, students will have the opportunity to gain direct, hand-on experience organizing the annual Georgetown Student Film Festival. The former director of AFI DOCS (formerly Silverdocs) and the Newport International Film Festival will lead them through every logistical and theoretical aspect of what it takes to envision, prepare, and execute an ambitious festival event, including areas of focus such as programming, production, and marketing. Additionally, the course will contextualize our own practice through the exploration of the phenomena of film festivals, including their historical and cultural significance, distinct programmatic identities, and their relationships to an ever-evolving film industry and to particular film themes and genres. From its origins in Venice in 1932 where nine nations presented twenty-five feature films against a climate of geopolitical disputes, to the recent proliferation of specialized and thematic festivals world wide (independent, documentary, experimental, shorts, human rights, queer), this course will look at how festivals do more than just exhibit films, but also serve as important market places and sometimes even the springboard for new artistic and/or political climates in world cinema. Industry experts and leading filmmakers will periodically visit the class, and in addition to our own creation of a film festival, there will be opportunities to integrate and support established film festivals in the DC region for additional learning.

FMST-3398: Gaming & Justice (Phillips)
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the fundamentals of game design through the lens of control systems and strategies of resistance to the often problematic content and practices of the video game industry. The course is part seminar, part workshop that will give students an introduction to the rhetorical devices of video games and virtual spaces and experience in manipulating those devices to create a prototype for a digital game or other interactive experience. Approximately half of the class meetings will engage students in traditional seminar-style lecture and discussion format, with the other half dedicated to guiding student groups in building theoretically-informed projects that will make a persuasive argument about or intervention on a social justice issue of their choice. This will give students experience in connecting theory with praxis, creating collaborative scholarship, working in new modes of literacy, and extending the uses of technology beyond those for which they were originally intended. After completing this course, students will have worked in groups to produce a concept for a game, game mod, or virtual space, along with a working proof-of-concept demonstration. This course will build team-working skills, familiarization with new technology, and an understanding of how ideas can be communicated in ways other than writing.

FMST-3399: Social Justice Documentary (Cook)
Students in Social Justice Documentary will work in small teams to produce short documentary videos about social justice issues as related to the work of Washington, DC-based Community Organizations. At the end of the course students should be able to define, summarize, and interpret documentary theories; have a working knowledge of pre-production, production, and post-production processes that are part of making a documentary video; and be able to formulate and demonstrate ways through which documentary video can be used to meet social justice ends. In addition, students will have gained experience in working as members of video production team—as successful video production heavily depends on cooperation, collaboration, and respect among team members. This is a 4-credit course and will require substantial time outside of scheduled class meetings. This course will include hands-on workshops on camera, lighting, sound, and editing scheduled in additional to regular course meetings.

FMST-4971: Capstone II Film and Media Studies (Sitney)
The Capstone is an opportunity for students to explore their own interests in the field of Film and Media Studies. In FMST 4971: Film and Media Studies Capstone, students work individually or on groups to actualize their research. The topic and format of the capstone is chosen by the student in FMST 4970: Capstone Preparation. Projects may take a number of forms (a scholarly essay, a documentary short, an experimental short, a screenplay, audio documentary, or short narrative film, e.t.c.). All projects must be critically engaging and clearly contextualized in the field of Film and Media Studies. Students who undertake a time-based media project must work in a group (of their choosing) no smaller than 2 and no bigger than 4 members. Students who chose to produce written capstones may work individually. Students may choose any topic and form within the field of Film and Media Studies provided that the student has previous experience with the research area and methodology, for example, someone who has not taken any documentary classes may not make a documentary.

Film and Media Courses

Fall 2023 Courses

Spring 2024 Courses

Summer 2024 Courses