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COMMUNITY NEWS
One of the newest programs at
Birmingham-Southern is also one of
the hottest these days.
The Media and Film Studies (MFS)
major, which launched in 2010,
currently has 26 declared majors.
Recent graduates have already been
accepted into the best film and
media graduate programs in the
country, including the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, University of
Chicago, USC, UCLA, and University
of Texas-Austin.
It’s a tribute to the strength of the
college’s broad-based approach to
education, said Dr. David Resha,
assistant professor of media and film
studies and director of the program.
“I’m incredibly proud and
encouraged by the success we have
had so far,” Resha said. “We’ve had
some great acknowledgement of our
students’ talent and creative work.”
Resha said BSC students seem
naturally interested in understanding
the media and technology that
surround them, from television
and film to computers and cell
phones. Taught from a liberal arts
tradition, the MFS program takes
an innovative, interdisciplinary
approach that looks at all of these
forms of media. Students examine
films and their production, analyze
the cultural impact of mass media,
and develop historical and cultural
understandings of text.
“Film and media-making is
inherently interdisciplinary, bringing
together writing, photography,
design, journalism, psychology,
and economics,” Resha said. “The
MFS program brings these diverse
fields together while also allowing
students to pursue one or more of
these elements in a more focused
way. This isn’t just distinctive from
other film and media programs—
it’s also essential to properly
understanding media and how it
works.”
But not all the learning happens
inside the classroom. Each January,
Resha takes students to the Sundance
Film Festival in Park City, Utah,
where they get a backstage look
at independent film production.
Closer to home, MFS students attend
and intern for Birmingham’s annual
Sidewalk Film Festival; student Colin
Perry even had one of his short
films,
Relative
—a class project—
shown at the prestigious event.
This year, the program has
brought on Daniel Wheatcroft—an
esteemed Hollywood producer and
voting member of the Academy
who was involved with the making,
marketing, and distribution of
blockbusters like
Schindler’s List
,
Field of Dreams
, and
Apollo 13
—as
an adjunct instructor. And Resha
himself just published a book,
The
Cinema of Errol Morris
, analyzing
the work of the influential director,
including commercial successes like
The Thin Blue Line
and
The Fog of
War
.
MFS majors have had their own
filmmaking successes, too. Current
student Sean Alexander’s short film,
One Way Out
, won the President’s
Award at the North Carolina Film
Awards. Elizabeth Hagale ’13, who
is interning with the Huntsville
production company Prototype
Multimedia, is executive producing
an episodic drama,
Son of Somerset
Files
, that appears on YouTube,
Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr.
But what thrills Resha most is
watching MFS graduates succeed
not just in filmmaking, but in a
range of fields, including television,
advertising, education, and public
relations.
“I think this demonstrates the
strength of this type of education,
and it’s the primary reason I wanted
to teach at a liberal arts college,”
Resha said. “The entire faculty at
BSC is training students to be careful
thinkers, clear communicators, and
effective problem-solvers. And these
skills translate to anything graduates
want to do in the real world.”
BSC’s growing Media and Film Studies program
emphasizes interdisciplinary studies
Dr. David Resha gives instruction to sophomore MFS major Adam Cordelle in the
Film Production II course.