The Master in Fine Arts program in Film and Media Arts at Temple University is the country's foremost program in alternative film and video. We train filmmakers, videomakers, screenwriters, and media artists who seek to challenge the current practices of Hollywood and commercial television.
The program contains approximately forty graduate students from diverse communities and a range of countries. It is large enough to offer a great amount of inter-stimulation and a wide range of courses, yet small enough to afford individual attention, maximum access to equipment, and creative control over one's own projects.
We see the MFA program as a creative laboratory for producing works of social significance and artistic merit, and for exploring the nature of contemporary knowledge in the field including the emergence of new technologies and the relation of theory to practice.
The program encourages an openness to all media art forms with special attention to the contemporary documentary, independent narrative, and works arising out of both an artistic and social consciousness.
We are dedicated to keeping alive a documentary tradition and fostering alternative voices in narrative film and television that Hollywood and commercial media often ignore. These alternative voices include those of women, people-of-color and others that have been economically, politically or artistically disenfranchised.
The MFA is a terminal degree comparable to a PhD with the notable exception that the Temple program stresses a creative synthesis of both production and theory, requiring comprehensive exams and a final creative project instead of a dissertation. As a combination of academic and professional training, the degree qualifies one to teach on the university level.
The MFA Program at Temple is one of the most awarded graduate programs in the country in terms of national and international film/video awards. Projects have received top prizes in every major student competition in the U.S. and abroad. Student projects have received major professional recognition including: Hollywood's coveted Nicholl Felowship In Screenwriting Award, several Oscar nominations and awards from both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Temple graduate students have received nationally competitive UFVA Production Grants, NEA Arts Corps Media Fellowships, and Eastman Kodak Scholarships (the nation's highest competitive scholarship in cinematography).
Major professional awards and recognition have included: American Film Festival, Asian American International, Ann Arbor International, Chicago International, Dore Schary Awards, New York Film Festival, Nissan FOCUS, Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, San Francisco International, Sundance, and major festivals in Athens, Berlin, Bonn, Dallas, Houston, London, Melbourne, Montreal, Paris.
Temple productions can be seen on WHYY/12 Public Television and WYBE/35 Public Television, as well as national and international broadcast on American, Asian, Australian, Canadian, and European Television.
MFA productions have also been picked up for distribution by such prestigious organizations as Direct Cinema Limited, New Day Films, Coe Film Associates, Women Make Movies, and the Museum of Modern Art.