Film and Media Studies is an undergraduate program incorporating courses in film history, aesthetics, and theory; theory and practice in television, popular culture, and new media; and all aspects of 16mm film and digital video production, including narrative, documentary, animated, and experimental film.

Since 1995, the Film and Media Studies Program has combined a real industry education with a rigorous, well-rounded curriculum designed to foster critical understanding and historical knowledge of film and media, as well as their relationship to modern cultures, literatures, art, history, and philosophy. Students apply their analytical and theoretical knowledge to the production and creation of visual texts.

Our small size allows us to offer undergraduates an unusual amount of hands-on experience, intensive mentoring, and significant individual attention. Students work in a highly collaborative environment in small classes, learning from experts in the theory, history, and practice of filmmaking and media, who are dedicated to teaching.

Majors often participate in the projects of the Hopkins Film Society, including the planning and organization of various film series and events, and the award-winning Johns Hopkins Film Festival. Through the film society, students learn to curate and to operate 35mm and 16mm projectors. The student-written film blog, HopkinsCinemAddicts, provides a lively forum for film criticism, theoretical discussion, and production notes and diaries.

The majority of our students go on to attend graduate film school or to work in the film and media industries directly after graduation, Among our alumni are directors, screenwriters, producers, editors, actors, cinematographers, financial and marketing executives, film scholars and curators, entertainment lawyers, agents, digital technicians, and web designers. Graduates of the program work for Sony, Pixar, Fox Searchlight, Comedy Central, MTV, NBC Universal, William Morris-Endeavor, CNN, and Disney, among numerous other media companies.

The Film and Media Studies Program opened a 20,000-square-foot production and classroom facility in the vibrant Station North Arts District in 2015. In addition, the nearby Parkway Theater provides a state-of-the-art screening venue. Station North is a newly thriving arts area a brief shuttle ride south of the Homewood campus. The move allows extraordinary opportunities for collaboration with MICA, the Peabody Institute, and the Maryland Film Festival.

Student Voices

“Hopkins taught to me admire film for the rigor of its inquiry. I remember combing the Homewood campus for something worth shooting. Beauty, it seemed, would yield itself to you only if you looked hard enough. And this was precisely what the camera encouraged. Through it I discovered things to which I had never paid attention before—that ‘sudden light,’ for instance, ‘that transfigures a trivial thing, a weathervane, a windmill…the dust in the barn door.’ For me, like for Walter Pater, film was a way of interrogating nature.”

Daniel Schwartz ’10, Writer/Associate Producer, Filtered Communications Co.