Departments and Programs in Film, Video, Still Photography And
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'8y ar,,d eleclrcnic ts and programs nentrat i var;etv Center activities . , or film su_y, the~ ;, presen_ . one Department of Programs concentrating primarily on photography as a inerna WniversitY Center at Binghamton), one Program in. means of artistic expression have been developed at Uni- iy (University Center at 8010), and three versity Centers at Albany, Buffalo and Stony Brook, in Film Study (University Center at Albany, and University Colleges at New Palo, Oswego and Potsdam and iversity Colleges at Cortland and Purchase) with a fourth College of Ceramics at Alfred University, in addition Film Program in the preparatory stages at University graduate, Program in Photographic Studies, also at Uni- College at Brockport Among the two-year colleges, versity Center at Buffalo, which is offered through the Community College of the !=leaner fakes has offered a Visual Studies Abrksl7op in Rochester. Studies (although this program Concentration in Cinema Electronic music is the least developed, in terms of discontinued, and Whawk Valley has recently been academic curricula, of the arts under consideration. There an AA degree-granting Community College is considering is, however, a formal Program at University Center at Cinematography . option in Photography and Albany and an informal program offering no major but a Although there are no departments or programs concentration for graduate students at University Center at dedicated to video, Center for Media Study at University Stony Brook. university Center a inghamton Now in its sixth year, the Department began as a cinema course taught by Professor Larry Gottheim, now Chairman, Department is described the philosophy of the Cinema through the English Department in 1968. The film cur- in the following way: riculum expanded to a "program" of two faculty in 1969 The Department of Cinema is devoted to the and gained full status of an undergraduate Department development of artists and creative thinkers in offering a B.A, degree in 1970. It has since grown to the cinema . It aims at a unified sense of cinema, extent of having six full-time faculty and one visiting providing a basis for new insights and works. Specific professor offering sixteen courses each year in film to more than 5% of analysis and production, including those of production, film analysis and paracinema video, are taught, but not as ends in themselves. The thirty majors and about six hundred total students . major program aims to produce not narrow specialists in lighting, cinematography, or film editing, but The most important recent developments in the Cinema rather broadly trained artists and thinkers sensitive to Department are plans for an M.A. degree and the expansion a whole range of cinematic values . of activities to include video. Ralph Hocking, a faculty member, offers two courses each year in video as an art, major in cinema bring together the Students who utilizing the extensive facilities of the Experimental Tele- have learned and, the values to which techniques they vision Center, where he is Director . (Further information made sensitive, in a senior thesis they have been about the Experimental Television Center, a not-for-profit work or a which consists of an independent film educational corporation separate and distinct from the creative insight and writing about film, demonstrating State university of blew York system, accompanies the ability . Academic Courses in Video chart) Students have con- The Department encourages studies in the theories structed majors in video art through the Innovational and techniques of other art disciplines such as music, Projects Board; they may also receive credit for in- painting, theater, acrd literature. dependent work in still photography . 16 Other faculty are Ken Jacobs, Daniel Barnett and Saul L"W degrees to "Special Majors" and a dozen master of Arts it Humanities degrees each year, as well as directing filry Facilities include 8 and 16mm production and dissertations by PhD. candidates in the English projection equipment with synchronizers, and Frenct horizontal and Departments . Over four hundred vertical editing machines,, magnasyne independent, docu and interlock pro- mentary and feature narrative films jectors and processing and one hundred any equipment for black-and-white film. fifty experimental videotapes There is also are screened in the Program'; limited 35mm production equipment. Video courses each year, facilities at the Experimental Television Center include black-and-white and color cameras, 1/2-inch and 1-inch Facilities in film include super-8 and 16mm production decks, video projection, keyers, special effects generators, a and projection equipment, full 16mm editing facilities, an colorizer, a synthesizer and a spatial and intensity digitizer; optical printer, and sophisticated 16mm sound-sync much of this equipment is owned by the Center, some is on equipment, including synchronizer, double system interlock loan from the University . projector and a recorder reproducer for 16mm edge track. Center for Media Study also The Department screens has the use of the permanent hundreds of primarily art and 35mm projection feature-length facilities at University Center at Buffalo. narrative films each year, the Department's Video $2000 facilities in the Centers Experimental video rental budget supplemented by the more than Laboratory include black-and-white cameras, 1/2-inch seventy-five films in the SUNY/Binghamton Film Archives and 3/4-inch color editing decks, special effects and the screenings of the Harpur Film generator/ Society, an extra- switcher, colorizer, synthesizer, academic organization . color video projector and sophisticated electronic and test equipment. Along with arrangements for regular visiting professors, Seeing itself as a catalyst, heaping to the Cinema Department also define and advance sponsors one-day to one- the new field of Media Study, month programs with the Center for Media Study several dozen visiting film and video has been active in artists each year sponsoring or co-sponsoring five con- . The Department hosted the first Uni- secutive Summer Institutes in the Making and Under- versity-wide conference on Cinema in 1972. Professor standing of Film/Media, numerous regional, national and Gottheim reports that most of the interaction of the international conferences (on Teaching resources in Film Cinema Department with other departments in the Uni- and Media, Autobiography in the Independent American versity occurs at an informal level, with students taking a Cinema, Teaching lylakin~, Women in "'Inn and "ideo, variety of other courses and faculty giving lectures in other departments. The planned M.A. Program calls for greater interrelationships of this type . The Cinema Department lists an increase in faculty/personnel as its most basic need at present. University Center at f The Center for Adedia 'ti -ut ently offers courses in film and is video making and . iri-etation, in its develop- ment of "three areas of wear work which will lead to undergraduate and graduate degrees~ 1) the making of films, videotapes and other media ; 2) the history, theory and analysis of media forms; 3) the psychic and social effects of media." Gerald OGrady, the Program's Director since its inception in 1972, defines the Center's philosophy in the following way: "Media mean all of the symbolic codes of human culture, and their study involves all of the ways in which they interact with and influence each other in constructing human consciousness. The informing insight of the Program is that all citizens should have an under- standing of and access to all of the codes of expression, communication and information-transfer of the culture in which they live.'' The other fuH-ti clultY-Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits, Bohus. Brian Henderson and James Blue-and one ti about twelve under- graduate and S ., :te courses in filmmaking, history and analysis ani - __)urses in videomaking and theories of electronic med each year to over three hundred undergradua bout sixty-five graduate students . The Program is open to double majors, joint majors and a variety of ad-hoc majors with departments concentrating on other S ina Vasuika, Center for r , ia Study, codes, and awards approximately ten undergraduate E uffaio . Electronic Arts), over fifty visiting lecturers on film and the Alsen (English), Gordon Beadle (History), Henry Steck electronic arts yearly and series of recent Chinese, Polish, (Political Science) and, in the past, Marc Lowenstein Soviet and Egyptian films. As part of a major research (Philosophy) . project of the Center, the Oral History of the Independent Although there are very few majors as yet, the eight to American Film, more than five hundred hours of interviews ten courses offered in the Cinema Studies Program each with fifty independent filmmakers have been recorded year attracts an enrollment of about five hundred students. which, along with an expanding collection of films, Seventy-five to one hundred films, predominantly English experimental videotapes and printed materials, comprise and Foreign Language feature length narratives, are the Center's research resources. screened each year . Center for Media Study has submitted a "Letter of Present Program activities include the attempt to form a Intent" to offer A.S ., M.A., M .F .A. and PhD . degrees . As Student Cinema Studies Club to sponsor visiting lecturers, part of its function as a dynamic and integrative agent and strengthening of support of the participating depart-