MSU MFA Program In Science & Natural History Filmmaking
Montana State University’s Master of Fine Arts Program in Science & Natural History Filmmaking (SNHF), founded in 2000, continues to be the only MFA program of its kind in the world. Its mission is to take students with backgrounds in science, engineering, and technology and prepare them as filmmakers with the creative and critical skills necessary to produce work that contributes to the public understanding of science. Students in the program come from a wide variety of backgrounds including the physical sciences, the social sciences, engineering, technology, medicine, and law.
The SNHF Program is part of Montana State University’s School of Film and Photography, which also offers undergraduate degrees in filmmaking and photography.
The program trains directors and producers who are familiar with all parts of the movie-making process. Students in the SNHF Program produce works that range from documentary to experimental. Many of these student films have received festival awards, while others have been broadcast in many major venues such as PBS, The Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, The Science Channel, CNN, 60 Minutes II, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News. The students have produced films for the National Park Service, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, and such non-profit organizations including the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, and the Nature Conservancy. Student work from the SNHF Program has appeared in major museums, schools, and cultural venues.
Each year, SNHF student films are screened at the Element Film Festival in Bozeman, Montana.
Read more about MSU MFA Program In Science & Natural History Filmmaking: Selected Awards and Festival Screenings
Famous quotes containing the words program, science, natural, history and/or filmmaking:
“The twelve Cells for Incorrigibles ... are also carved out of the solid rock hill. On the walls of one of the cells human “liberty” is clearly inscribed, with the “liberty” in significant quotation marks.”
—Administration in the State of Ariz, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.”
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915)
“When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)
“As far as the filmmaking process is concerned, stars are essentially worthless—and absolutely essential.”
—William Goldman (b. 1931)