CMA About

ABOUT

CINEMA & MEDIA ARTS

We nurture creative, bold, and meaningful work by new generations of filmmakers, media artists, screenwriters and thinkers, based on a curriculum enlivened by and relevant to the continuous changes in our field.

Housed in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design, the Department of Cinema and Media Arts is the most comprehensive university-based film program in the country, with a curriculum rooted in the interrelationship of theory and practice.

We offer degrees in four areas. In Production, students work with state-of-the art facilities to make films and develop specialized skills in directing, cinematography, editing, sound, and production management. In Screenwriting, students explore the craft of moving-image storytelling in the only degree-granting screenwriting program in Canada. In Media Arts, students use new camera systems, game engines, interactive environments and social platforms to build narrative and experimental content and experiences. In Cinema and Media Studies, students examine cinematic cultures through the lens of history, visual culture, technology, industry, sexuality and race as well as aesthetics, learning how to understand cinematic practices and diverse forms of representation from around the world.

Our studio courses seek to nurture films, screenplays and media works committed to richness of content, creative vitality and mastery of technique. Our studies courses offer a challenging critical and interdisciplinary perception of the world we live in through its cinema. All four areas benefit from engagement with one another, which is one of the unique strengths of our department.

Our teaching faculty is composed of a diverse group of filmmakers, media pioneers and scholars who are actively engaged in research and production, well-established in their fields. Our graduates are employed in the Canadian film, television and media industries in a wide variety of creative, technical, and executive positions, and are at work in film festivals, galleries, schools, and other film and fine arts institutions. The range of their accomplishments reflects our determination to offer our students more than just career training; our programs are intended to serve as doorways to a life of reflective and productive engagement with a world increasingly defined by moving images across diverse media. Located in Toronto, Canada’s premier destination for film and one of the most diverse cities in the world, we approach the cinema as an education in global citizenship, while we relish Canada’s cultural diversity and the way it is reflected in our students and the work they produce.

Supported by a dedicated professional staff, we take considerable care to recruit, admit and advance through our programs highly motivated students who want an extraordinary university education.