Cinema is Everywhere. Cinema Studies students engage with the moving image in all of its forms, on all its platforms, across the world. They pay attention to the margins as well as the mainstream. They are constantly experimenting with exciting new forms of research and scholarship. They are critics, curators, and creators.

During their time here, Cinema Studies students will hone their critical voice, develop a trained eye and ear, and practice in-depth, careful analysis of moving images. NYU’s Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies was one of the first university departments in the country devoted to film history, theory, and aesthetics. Over time our focus has expanded to include broadcast television, video art, and digital media. After years of being steeped in an interdisciplinary, international approach, many alumni go on to careers in museum film departments, archives, and programming; journalism; or in the film industry as filmmakers, screenwriters, and editors.

Moving images, and the sounds that frequently accompany them, matter in our lives — politically, culturally, artistically. Cinema Studies at NYU offers historical and theoretical frameworks to understand the resonances of moving image culture, especially in the fraught global context of the 21st century.

Dana Polan, Cinema Studies Professor

Dana Polan

Martin Scorsese Professor of Cinema Studies

Events

Book cover Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies

Dec. 13

Dana Polan on Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Dana Polan is the Martin Scorsese Professor and department chair in the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies.

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News

  • group shot of people holding up CDs

    Fall 2024 MIAP Newsletter

    News and updates from MIAP, and Kudos from MIAP alumni, students, faculty, and staff. This edition covers the past year, from winter 2023 - fall 2024. It has been a very successful and busy year! Congratulations to everyone on your contributions to the profession and the program.

  • faculty and student MIAP attendees at this past week’s AMIA conference in Tulsa.

    AMIA 2023 in Tulsa

    Moving Image Archiving and Preservation faculty and students recently presented at the Association of Moving Image Archivists conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

  • Announcing the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies

    A major gift from the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation has enabled the creation of the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.