The University of Southern California is a private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in California.
The University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts (SCA) houses seven academic divisions: Film & Television Production; Cinema & Media Studies; John C. Hench Division of Animation + Digital Arts; John Wells Division of Writing for Screen & Television; Interactive Media & Games; Media Arts + Practice; Peter Stark Producing Program.
Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to cinema as an art form and a medium. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies.
Lev Manovich is an author of books on digital culture and new media, and professor of Computer Science at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Manovich's current research and teaching focuses on digital humanities, social computing, new media art and theory, and software studies.
The University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts's Interactive Media & Games Division first accepted M.F.A. students in 2002. The division currently offers both undergraduate (B.A.) and graduate (M.F.A.) programs in interactive media and game design. The programs include courses in game design, development, audio, animation, and user research as well as experimental work in gestural and immersive interfaces, transmedia design, and interactive cinema.
Mariano "Mar" Elepaño is a Filipino American independent filmmaker, teacher, and has been the production supervisor of the John C. Hench Division of Animation and Digital Arts, USC School of Cinematic Arts since 1993.
The USC Center for Visual Anthropology (CVA) is a center located at the University of Southern California. It is dedicated to the field of visual anthropology, incorporating visual modes of expression in the academic discipline of anthropology. It does so in conjunction with faculty in the anthropology department through five types of activities: training, research and analysis of visual culture, production of visual projects, archiving and collecting, and the sponsorship of conferences and film festivals. It offers a B.A. and an MVA in Visual Anthropology.
Howard Anthony Rosenberg is an American television critic. He worked at The Louisville Times from 1968 through 1978 and then worked at the Los Angeles Times for 25 years where he won a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Rosenberg coined the term mixed martial arts, or MMA, in his review of the first Ultimate Fighting Championship event UFC 1 in Los Angeles Times on November 15, 1993.
David Isaacs is an American screenwriter and producer. He has written episodes of M*A*S*H, Cheers, its spin-off Frasier, and The Simpsons with Ken Levine.
Gene Youngblood was an American theorist of media arts and politics, and a respected scholar in the history and theory of alternative cinemas. His best-known book, Expanded Cinema, was the first to consider video as an art form and has been credited with helping to legitimate the fields of computer art and media arts. He is also known for his pioneering work in the media democracy movement, a subject on which he taught, wrote, and lectured, beginning in 1967.
The DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is the only archive and research center outside of Germany devoted to a broad spectrum of filmmaking from and related to the former East Germany. DEFA was the state owned film company of the GDR. The non-profit organization houses an extensive collection of 35mm and 16mm prints, dcps, DVDs, books, periodicals and articles. Students are involved in all aspects of the archive's research, outreach and teaching activities and also gain valuable non-academic experience in subtitling and library, conference and arts management. In order to fulfill its dual mission—to make DEFA films available and better known, and to broaden understanding of filmmaking in the GDR by interdisciplinary critical scholarship—the DEFA Film Library undertakes a range of scholarly and support activities.
One of the principal features defining traditional cinema is a fixed and linear narrative structure. In Database Cinema however, the story develops by selecting scenes from a given collection like a computer game in which a player performs certain acts and thereby selects scenes and creating a narrative.
The academics of the University of Southern California center on The College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, the Graduate School, and its 17 professional schools.
Kathy Smith is an Australian independent animator, painter, new media artist, and Professor with the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Smith chaired the John C. Hench Division of Animation & Digital Arts from 2004 - 2009 & 2010 - 2014.
Julius Onah is a Nigerian-American filmmaker and occasional actor.
Established in 2002, the Echo Park Film Center is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit media arts organization located in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. The Echo Park Film Center provides equal and affordable access to film/video education and resources via a community microcinema and meeting space, free and low-cost filmmaking classes and workshops, comprehensive small format film equipment rental and resources, and a green-energy mobile cinema/film school.
Created in 2013, Media Arts and Practice (MA+P) is the seventh degree-granting division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Holly Willis is a Professor and Chair of the Media Arts and Practice division in the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Previously, she served as Associate Dean of Research and Founding Chair of Media Arts and Practice, as well as Director of Academic Programs at USC's Institute for Multimedia Literacy. She is former editor of the magazines RES and Filmmaker, of which she is a co-founder. Willis was also the co-curator of the international digital media festival RESFest.
Delta Kappa Alpha (ΔΚΑ) is a national, gender-inclusive, cinematic professional fraternity founded in 1936, at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California, United States. The vision of Delta Kappa Alpha is to be recognized as the premier institute of upstanding entertainment industry leaders.
Howard A. Rodman is a screenwriter, author and professor. He is the former President of the Writers Guild of America, West, professor and former chair of the writing division at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, alumnus of Telluride Association Summer Program and an artistic director of the Sundance Institute Screenwriting Labs.
