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The film and photography major provides a thorough grounding in the arts of film and photography, balancing instruction in the creation of photographs, films, and videos with courses in the history, aesthetics, and cultural import of these arts. The culmination of the major is a senior project consisting of a creative and/or research project. The major can be applied to careers in film and television, the visual arts, teaching, photojournalism, advertising, public relations, publishing and others.
Production classes in both photography and film/video are small and are conducted in a supportive atmosphere that emphasizes personal, creative development and technical mastery of craft. Students have many opportunities to exhibit and screen their work to the campus and general public.
In addition to course
work in the history of still photography, Hollins provides one of the most extensive programs in film studies in Virginia. Students can take classes that study classic Hollywood cinema, experimental cinema, and world cinema, as well as an array of courses that examine the films of individual directors, such as Ingmar Bergman or Alfred Hitchcock.
The curriculum is supplemented by visiting photographers and filmmakers who exhibit and screen their work at Hollins. And each Short Term, majors participate in internships that provide practical experience on film productions, in the television industry, art museums, and photography galleries.
Learn from Guest Photographers and Filmmakers
Hollins film and photography majors benefit from regular visits by internationally recognized artists and scholars.
Guest Artists
Award-winning director Spike Lee (She's Gotta Have It, Do the
Right Thing, Malcolm X) visited campus and spoke with
students in April 2002. Tom Noonan, the Sundance Grand Prize winning
director (What Happened Was...) and feature film actor (Knockaround
Guys, Last Action Hero, Manhunter), visited the summer Screenwriting
& Film Studies program and led acting workshops for graduate
and undergraduate film students.
Godfrey Reggio, the visionary filmmaker and activist whose groundbreaking film Koyaanisqatsi has profoundly influenced cinema recently visited Roanoke. Reggio showed his ‘Qatsi’ films to sold-out audiences at the Grandin Theatre and spoke with filmmaking students on campus.
Gulpilil - One Red Blood, the documentary by filmmaker Darlene Johnson about Australian Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil (Walkabout, Crocodile Dundee, Rabbit-Proof Fence) was recently shown at Hollins. Gulpilil and Johnson were both present at the film screening.
 Academy-Award
winning filmmaker Paul Wagner presented his film Windhorse
in January 2000. Also, the screening of Four Days (a Paramount release) included a discussion led by the film's screenwriter, Pinckney Benedict, and the film's director, Curtis Wehrfritz.
Film director Lizzie Borden (Working Girls) has lectured at Hollins. Acclaimed Berlin filmmaker Ula Stöckl and German filmmaker Doris Dörrie have each spent a semester at Hollins as artists-in-residence. Documentary filmmakers Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (The Times of Harvey Milk and
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt) have also visited
the Hollins campus.
Sundance and CineVegas Film Festival programmer Mike Plante recently spoke with students about the short film form and presented award-winning short films.
Independent filmmakers Laura Colella, Kevin Everson, Martha Colburn, Bill Brown and Tom Comerford have visited Hollins to show their work and speak with students.
Spouses Nancy Spencer '69 and Eric Renner, publishers of the Pinhole Journal and nationally known photographers, were artists-in-residence at Hollins. Under their supervision, a walk-in pinhole camera obscura was permanently installed on campus and an issue of the Pinhole Journal featured the work of Hollins' students. In the spring of 2005, the Hollins-based Eleanor D. Wilson Museum hosted an historical exhibit featuring the photographs of writer Eudora Welty. In the fall of 2005, the inaugural exhibit of the museum featured a large exhibit and campus visit by nationally acclaimed photographer/artist Carrie Mae Weems. Contemporary photographer Robert Parke-Harrison exhibited his work in 2007.
In recent years several nationally recognized, award-winning photographers have visited and exhibited their work on campus, including Hollins alumna Sally Mann; Linda Conner, who also teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute; and Anne Noggle, who has received national grants to continue her portrait studies of older women. Cutting-edge postmodernists Sandy Skoglund and Barbara Kruger have also lectured at Hollins.
Scholars
Dr. Ray Carney, an authority on American independent filmmaking, including the work of the late John Cassavetes, recently visited campus, presenting alternatives to mainstream moviemaking.
Film scholar Renata Jackson lectured on Maya Deren, one of the early American women filmmakers and an essential figure in avant-garde cinema. David Bordwell, film scholar and author of standard film texts (Film
Art, Film History and On the History of Film Style) has also recently given presentations on campus.
Colloquium on German Film
Since 1986, Hollins University has been the host of the annual Colloquium on German Film. The colloquium has featured such themes as "Images of Women in Recent German Films," with guest filmmaker and performance artist Valie Export (Invisible Adversaries and Syntagma); "The Third Reich in German films", featuring prominent German director Michael Verhoeven (The Nasty Girl and My Mother’s Courage) and his wife, Senta Berger; and "Films of Doris Dörrie", featuring the filmmaker herself.
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