Film at Hampshire College

Film, Video, and Photography
Visual artists at Hampshire explore film, video, and photography primarily through independent experimentation with many forms of analog, digital, and electronic media, as well as installation and performance.

This individualized process of creation, along with our internationally recognized faculty, excellent technical facilities, and staff support, ensures that Hampshire students can develop their fullest artistic visions along with the tools to produce them.

Students are given the necessary foundations in form, technique, and production skills—while being encouraged to examine the theoretical and critical contexts and the current practices and debates that will inform their artistic expression.

Student Project Titles

 * Sea Shift/Memento Mori: a Photographic Installation
 * The Horror Film
 * The Poetics of Photography
 * The Vampire Hunter
 * Solitary Spaces: An Exploration Through Paint and Video
 * Following Jake
 * Authority Party: A Division III Film
 * Domestic Taxonomies: A Film and Video Installation
 * Somatic Encounters: An Exploration of Intimacy
 * Ten Foot Tall: An Experimental Film
 * Two Projects in Documentary Practice
 * Acting for the Screen

Featured Faculty Profiles
Baba Hillman Associate Professor of Film and Video

Robert Seydel Associate Professor of Visual Art

Kane Stewart Film, Photo, and Video Facility Administrator and Instructional Staff

Sample First-Year Course

 * Hand Made Films

This course will explore experimental and avant-garde films made in the artisanal mode often in political response to commercial culture or in concert with developments in modern and post-modern art. The course will focus on films that respond directly to the physical properties of the medium either by subverting the photographic process or by directly manipulating the materials through primitive animation or direct painting on film. We will screen films from all periods of cinema history, from Winsor McCay to Stan Brakhage, as well as by current artists. Also, students will try their own hand made filmmaking through group and individual projects with pin-hole cameras, painting and drawing on film, cel and object animation, and hand-processing techniques.

Sample Courses at Hampshire

 * Advanced Photography: Sequence/Structure/Juxtaposition
 * Advanced Screenwriting Workshop
 * Breaking the Frame: European New Wave Cinemas of the 1960s &amp; 1970s
 * Computer Animation I, II &amp; III
 * The Cultured Camera
 * Documentary Practice: The Archive
 * Exploring Photography in the Digital Realm
 * Film Workshop I &amp; II
 * Hand Made Films
 * Intro to Film Studies: History &amp; Theory, 1895-1960
 * Intro to Media Arts in Film, Photography &amp; Video: Cuba
 * Intro to Media Production: Images of War
 * Japanese Cinema
 * Literature, Opera, Film
 * Mapping Time: Histories &amp; Practices of Film/Video Installation Art
 * Performance &amp; Directing for Film, Video &amp; Installation
 * Performing the Image
 * Photography &amp; the East
 * Recycled Images
 * Still Photography I &amp; II
 * Video I &amp; II

Through the Consortium

 * British Film &amp; Television (SC)
 * Film Authorship: Hitchcock &amp; After (MHC)
 * Film Theory (SC)
 * History of World Cinema (MHC)
 * India in Film: Hollywood, Bollywood, Mollywood (AC)

Facilities and Resources
Hampshire has black and white photography and color facilities that include a film developing area for any size film; a Jobo processor for faster processing; a gang darkroom outfitted with ten enlargers; and nine individual darkrooms, each equipped with black and white enlargers and a developing area. All of the darkrooms have color enlargers, and students have access to a color-processing machine, as well as two high-end still photography digital labs and printing. Hampshire also has six flat-bed editing machines, an optical printer, and a professional-quality animation machine. Students have access to large and medium format photography cameras, 16mm film cameras, tripods, light meters, lights, lenses, and virtually any other piece of related equipment they might need. We have a Final Cut Pro editing suite, an Avid digital editing suite, a video studio, control room, and media lab. The media services office coordinates the booking of all films and videos in the Five College collections, loans of video production and audio/visual equipment, reservations for film preview rooms, and film/video reference help.

The new addition to the Jerome Liebling Center for FIlm, Photography and Video now houses the Advanced Media Workgroup, provides training and skill development in the production of media. The work ranges from video editing, sound design, and interactive DVD to still photography, page layout, presentations, and QuickTime VRs. Additionally, they install and maintain labs, classrooms, and facilities for media presentation and production, providing students with the skills and hardware to make, develop, and present media.

The Tashmoo Lecture Series brings filmmakers, photographers, multimedia artists, critics, and historians to Hampshire College. Lectures and workshops led by successful artists and cultural historians expose students to a wide range of styles and techniques as well as contemporary debates in the visual arts.

The Five College Film Council, a group of faculty drawn from many disciplines, works to coordinate the study of film and video at all five campuses. They meet regularly to exchange information about courses and faculty, and plan a coordinated approach to meeting common needs for instruction. The council oversees the shared teaching duties of joint faculty and sponsors an annual festival of student film, held in the spring.

Information Quoted From: http://www.hampshire.edu/admissions/film_photography.htm