Concurrent Certificate in Cinema Studies

School of the Arts
Togo Salmon Hall (TSH), Room 414, ext. 27671
https://sota.humanities.mcmaster.ca/

The Concurrent Certificate in Cinema Studies is designed to provide students with a credential in a new area. It will engage all campus undergraduates who seek to undertake a formal study of an art that touches every human’s life. The certificate’s key objectives are to develop a student’s knowledge of cinema’s form (i.e., inherent structure), its historical development, and an understanding of cinema’s interaction with theatre and dramatic performance. Doing so, the certificate crosses disciplinary boundaries. Students will strengthen their analytical skills of the medium, and develop the above core competencies, through contact with the structuring principles that make-up cinema’s unique features, and its artistic practices. The certificate will captivate a variety of undergraduate students, including those interested in the theories of the structuring capacities of the medium, and those students studying cinema towards a practical end. In the final course of the certificate, students will have the opportunity to cap their critical and analytical skills in a culminating practical project: producing a fictional narrative short. This practical cinematic project asks students to bring together their critical understandings of the medium, with a creative application of their imaginations, informed by the course knowledge they gain. The certificate will attract, hold the interest of, and support, students who desire to engage with cinema during their time at McMaster.