Film still with teepee house
KATAH-DIN, 16mm/video by Taylor Dunne, MFA 2014
Image of Marcy Saude
On location. Marcy Saude, MFA 2011
Jona Gerlach
Jona Gerlach, "The Pit" (2019) MFA 2020
Dakota Nanton, "Oh, Ophelia" Hand-painted & Digital Animation with Super 8
Dakota Nanton, "Oh, Ophelia" (2017), Hand-Painted and Digital Animation. MFA 2019

The MFA in Film is an interdisciplinary endeavor between the Art and Art History Department and the Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts Department and offers the best of both worlds.

We welcome applications from emerging film artists interested in creating fiction or non-fiction cinema, animation, moving image installations, media performance or hybrid time-based works from single channel to the white cube gallery, and beyond.

鶹Ժ interested in the legacies of cinema history, personal experimental filmmaking, media appropriation, social, environmental and landscape research, projection performance and installation, artisanal film laboratories, and film preservation are sure to find a faculty who are accomplished and ready to engage with them.

Research and development of Film MFA projects are supported through graduate coursework, studio visits with faculty and visiting artists, a yearly Imagemakers Graduate Seminar, the visiting filmmakers program First Person Cinema, and the annual Brakhage Film Symposium. Some grants available for funding of student projects. Grads are assigned their own studio space amongst their cohort of Arts Practices MFAs of all disciplines.

Film MFAs have access to the full range of cinematic tools from analog to digital: cameras, projectors and sundries, in-house digital-to-film & film-to-digital transfer stations, animation stands and optical printers, a fully stocked computer editing/post-production lab, a fully functioning Steenbeck lab, a chemical darkroom, a newshooting studio, and an in-progress film preservation center.

Admission to our program is selective and stronglydependent upon the portfolio and we are looking for creative potential in moving image work—not a reel—but films, videos, sound, installations or media performances you have created and are invested in.Other mediums also encouraged. Tell us what you are passionate about and why, and what you’ve seen that inspires you to work with film and media.

Study and create smart and innovative moving image works in a visual arts program inside a research university. Explore the full range of media materials and processes, integrating studio practice with history and critical studies. Work closely with a faculty of working artists, scholars, and cinephiles.

MFA Application


Explore the Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts Department