Bachelors Degree in Film Studies Overview
At Keene State College, you will learn to understand and appreciate the aesthetic qualities intrinsic to the medium of film, the technical skills to express your ideas, and a work ethic that will help you excel in your career.
Program Options
As a Film Studies majors you earn a bachelor of arts with a focus on either film production or critical studies.
Film production
As a Film production student, you fuse the conceptual, creative, and technical elements of our department’s curriculum as you bring your creative investigations to life. The department emphasizes the cross-pollination of critical studies and production, and provides opportunities to explore narrative, documentary, and experimental filmmaking, as well as animation.
While we recognize the need for technical proficiency, we emphasize the need for thoughtful content, a clarity of vision, and collaboration. As a production student making films, you are also studying the complexities of film research and theory, and attending diverse screenings. Additionally, our curriculum encourages you to pursue internship possibilities at a variety of professional production venues — most notable among these being our close association with award-winning documentarian Ken Burns’ Florentine Films, whose production house is a 20-minute drive from campus.
Critical Studies
In choosing the critical studies option, you will immerse yourself in film literature, screenings, conversations, and cultural events that expand your understanding of how films are created, distributed, exhibited and watched. As films can be viewed, interpreted, and appreciated in so many different ways, you learn how to weave together the strands of film history, aesthetic style, and political context as you create your own analysis of films.
In your first and second years, you explore the terminology, interpretive questions, and conceptual frameworks that help you develop an independent voice as a film critic. Through courses that explore film analysis, history, and diversity, critical studies you will hone your skills in film research, analysis, reading, and writing.
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Career and other Opportunities
Many of our students have gone on pursue their interest in film through graduate study, professional jobs within the film industry, or work as freelance film professionals and independent filmmakers.
Outcomes
As an Alum of the Keene State College Film Studies program, you are equipped with the tools to take a critical approach to film, including film history, film theory, and other additional frameworks for analysis. You have a foundation in production techniques, storytelling, and creative approaches to filmmaking.
Core Courses
Film Studies, B.A., Total Credits: 120
Core Courses
Video Production
Introduction to basic film-making vocabulary, technique, and aesthetics through production of video projects. Students gain skills in film-making through emphasis on idea generation, cinematography, and editing. For Film majors only.
Introduction to Film History
Examines the history of film's technical, aesthetic, industrial, and social development within an international context, particularly in relation to wider cultural and political movements. Screenings and frequent writing assignments encourage critical thinking skills in terms of cinema aesthetics and cultural criticism. For Film majors and minors only. Not open to students who have completed IHFILM 261. Fall, Spring.
Cinema and Diversity
This course invites students to consider films in their social, economic, and historical contexts of production and reception. By surveying key critical ideas, students will recognize political issues in filmic representations and gain an understanding of how power functions in the reproduction of social boundaries and cultural differences through cinema. Prerequisite: FILM 270 and FILM 271 OR IHFILM 260 and IHFILM 261. Fall.
Film Theory
The study of major film theories and their application to specific films. Formalist, structural, and ideological theories are covered. Prerequisites: Take FILM 270 and FILM 271 OR IHFILM 260 and IHFILM 261. Fall, Spring.
Say this for Gavin Key ’24 , who earned a degree in film production — he doesn’t dawdle.
The recent grad’s packed resume – directing two feature-length films, launching a...
Garrett Beltis ’13 is a senior producer at Nickelodeon Digital Franchise Studios in New York City.
He describes himself as restless and imaginative, and not always within reason, and he...
Real-world learning opportunities help to define a Keene State College education and make our...
