Breckenridge Festival of Film

The Film Studies Program of the University of Colorado at Boulder is nationally recognized for its diverse and innovative course offerings. It is especially known for its many areas of specialization, including narrative, documentary, experimental, and animation film. It is also known for its commitment to interdisciplinary teaching with a special emphasis on film and the visual arts. The late Stan Brakhage taught for over twenty years and his legacy remains central to the vision of Film Studies. Chaired by Professor Daniel Boord, the Film Studies department has a distinguished faculty including Jim Palmer, Phil Solomon, Melinda Barlow, Suranjan Ganguly, Ernesto Acevedo-Munoz, Clark Farmer, Kathleen Man, Jerry Aronson, Don Yannacito and Bruce Kawin. The program has a large collection of 16mm film prints for classroom use as well as cameras, film and digital video editing equipment, and optical printers which are available to students. Over 350 Film Studies majors are now enrolled in the program and its students have won national honors, including the Nisson Award, three Princess Grace Awards, and three Student Academy Awards, as well as numerous regional prizes.

When it was conceived in the mid-1960s, the CU Film Studies Program offered just two courses, Narrative Film and Film Theory, taught through the Departments of English and Humanities. During the 70s and 80s, Film Studies expanded in two directions - production and critical studies. NEA grants and University support made it possible to acquire filmmaking equipment and, concurrently, critical studies classes were expanded using faculty from other departments and talented local artists and scholars.

By the late 80s, the University and the state legislature recognized the value and impact of this program and approved both a BA degree in Critical Studies and a BFA degree in Film Production. The Critical Studies degree focuses on the study of the nuances of film as an art form and the Film Production degree focuses on the art of independent filmmaking. Film Studies also offers an interdisciplinary MFA degree with the Department of Art and Art History. Students in the first two years of either degree program are required to take courses in other art disciplines, in addition to several introductory film courses. At the upper division level, the curriculum tends to emphasize critical study of film and film production.

In 1989, the C.U. Film Studies Program began its association with the Breckenridge Festival of Film to educate and bring a new perspective on film viewing to Festival audiences. Each year, program professors screen a pair of related films and lead discussion on the productions themselves and on their significance - in relation to each other, to advances and trends in the technical or creative aspects of filmmaking and/or to the times and cultures in which they were produced. The initial program explored traditional vs. modern Japanese cinema and those since have included the experimental films of Stan Brakhage, a Hitchcock retrospective, the films of Germany, Spain, India and China, a tribute to Billy Wilder and, on the eve of the new millennium, a sci-fi take on the future as seen in 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and 1926’s Metropolis. The 25th Anniversary Festival included two ‘Movies About The Movies’ featuring The Stunt Man (the first film screened at the inaugural Breckenridge Festival of Film) and Robert Altman’s The Player.

For more information on the CU Film Studies Program, please contact: Film Studies Program, Campus Box 316, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0316. Call: (303) 492-7574 or log on to: www.colorado.edu/FilmStudies