Dylan Bentlage (CAS’18) says he’s glad he stuck with the CAS Cinema & Media Studies program even after learning there were no production classes.

Film & TV

BU’s Cinema & Media Studies Program Celebrates 10 Years

CAS classes take a deep dive into the theory and aesthetics of filmmaking

Filmmaker Dillon Bentlage says, with a smile, that he might not have been paying enough attention when he decided to major in Cinema & Media Studies at BU a decade ago.

“Halfway through my major, I realized I wasn’t taking any classes about screenwriting, directing, or cinematography, and I was eager to start,” Bentlage (CAS’18) said during a small gala to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the College of Arts & Sciences Cinema & Media Studies (CiMS) program last week at One Silber Way—an event that drew current students, faculty, and alumni.

“It was only after asking Professor Leland Monk [now a CAS associate professor emeritus of English] when those classes would be incorporated into the curriculum that he elaborated on the CiMS major, that it offers students a comprehensive education in the history, culture, aesthetics, and theory of moving-image media,” Bentlage said, laughing. “Okay, I was in the wrong major. Damn.” 

But Bentlage, who now makes independent films for his open production company KT Pictures and works as an editor on the side, is glad he stuck it out with CiMS.

“Stay in CiMS and you’ll learn that there isn’t just one way to interpret a film, whether it’s art house, indie, experimental, or a blockbuster,” Bentlage said. “There are great blockbusters and there are terrible independent films. Anyone can teach you how to make a film—sorry, if there’s any COM Film & TV majors here—you can just turn on a camera and hit record. CiMS will teach you what a film is, what makes them interesting, timeless, beautiful, heartbreaking, and funny. It will show you that cinema stands as the epicenter of artistic expression.”

Bentlage recalled that his CiMS convocation ceremony was in the same room as the anniversary celebration—and that there was only one other graduate that year. Today, the program has 31 majors and 16 minors, as well as many other students who take its courses to better understand the medium (and possibly satisfy a BU HUB requirement in the process). More than 1,000 students take CiMS courses every year, up from 600 five years ago.

“We’re bigger than we’ve ever been as a program, which has been really exciting over the past couple of years,” says program director Jonathan Foltz, a CAS associate professor of English.

More than a decade ago, faculty began to discuss creating CiMS, a humanities-based film studies program. For several years it had been a collaboration between the Film & TV program at the College of Communication and faculty at CAS.

COM’s Film & Television remains the hands-on program for those determined to become filmmakers, screenwriters, cinematographers, and others on the production side. CiMS, which became fully a part of CAS in 2020, offers an education in the aesthetics and theory of moving-image media. Some of its graduates have gone on to become filmmakers like Bentlage, while others run film series, become critics, or study and teach.

The decision to separate the programs “makes a lot of sense, because it gives us the freedom to pursue film studies within a more overtly humanistic context,” Foltz says.

“We see ourselves more as giving students an historical, cultural, artistic background. We want students to approach the study of film from a kind of a global perspective, one that’s not centered on Hollywood,” he says. “And that’s actually kind of rare if you look at different film studies programs across the country.

“We offer courses on Korean cinema, Chinese cinema, Japanese cinema, African cinema. It’s really important to us that students have a broad cultural and artistic basis for approaching these topics.”

Among recent popular courses are separate sections on Israeli and Arab film, the Holocaust in film, a two-part introductory course on the history of global cinema, and Introduction to Film and Media Aesthetics, taught by Foltz. 

More than just Hulk Smash 

All that doesn’t mean CiMS ignores Hollywood, though.

“Last year I taught a course on film noir that was a big attraction,” Foltz says. “And we have a course on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So you can imagine students banging down the door, trying to get into that one.”

It may have turned out to be a little different from what some of those students expected. The class was taught by a CAS master lecturer, Sean Desilets, the author of Hermeneutic Humility and the Political Theology of Cinema: Blind Paul (Routledge, 2016). More than just Hulk Smash, in other words.

“Anytime you put film in the title of a course, I think there can be the assumption that the class is going to be super easy,” Foltz says with a smile. “Our entire goal is to get them to think critically about the material. It’s always a nice surprise that you can make that turnaround in the classroom with the students.”

Other speakers at last week’s celebration with Bentlage included guest filmmaker Sarah Colt, who often works with PBS. She spoke about her path into documentary filmmaking. Violet Chen (CAS’25) gave a sampling of her senior-thesis research under the title Assimilation & Alienation: Asian Americans in Film, which looks at the work—and the Hollywood journeys—of filmmakers such as Ang Lee and Gregg Araki.

“I want to touch upon how Ang Lee’s personal career trajectory mirrors the illusion of assimilation and the false promise of the American dream,” she told the group. “Everyone recognizes the iconic image of Ang Lee winning an Oscar [as best director for Brokeback Mountain and again for Life of Pi], but few people know that after he graduated from NYU, he endured six years of unemployment. He later reflected on this period, saying no one was interested in a Chinese story. His success came only after he partnered with James Schamus, a Hollywood producer who became a key collaborator with Lee on almost all of his films.

“This shows that Lee’s success wasn’t just attachment to the American dream, it was shaped by broader sociopolitical forces.” 

Jennifer Cazenave, a CAS associate professor of French and director of undergraduate studies at CiMS, gave a sample of her research from her forthcoming book, Disability Histories from the Margins, looking at the way a new, more portable video rig called the Sony Portapack enables a broader range of stories to be told. In the passage she read, members of a collective called the People’s Video Theatre addressed disability issues by following a disabled veteran named Paul Miller to work in Manhattan.

Miller can only find parking a block and a half away from his office. Viewers watch as he pulls his wheelchair from the back seat, moves to the passenger side, unfolds the wheelchair, and adjusts the car’s seat before finally sliding into the wheelchair. The camera follows for nearly two minutes as he wheels himself along 47th Street against oncoming traffic before finally reaching the one curb cut on the street that allows him to reach his office.

“This tracking shot offered a lesson in seeing disability as a societal by-product of barriers and discrimination, rather than an individual problem to be solved through added effort,” Cazenave told the audience. “In this moment, the Portapack functions as a means of repairing exclusion from society, the big screen, and television.”

These kinds of insights show where the CiMS program really does its work, Foltz says.

“Their work is a reminder that filmmaking is not only a form of entertainment or creative expression—it is also a political act,” he says. “The images and stories we see on-screen always maintain a relationship to lives and histories that remain unrecorded. Jennifer and Violet are both, in their different ways, exploring the ethical and political dimension of how these stories are framed. This is precisely the kind of critical perspective we want our students to embrace.”