The Cinema and Media Arts Program in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design is a unique interdisciplinary program combining traditional scholarship with extensive opportunities for engaged, hands-on learning in the field of Cinema and Media Arts.

The Cinema and Media Studies Program, leading to an BA Honours degree, focuses on history, theory, criticism, curation, and producing of cinema and other media-rich arts, such as gaming and social media forms. Students learn to understand film, television and other moving images in relation to history, criticism, technology and aesthetics. They encounter a diverse world of cinema and media, and learn vital skills that will help them become leaders in our future world – a world that is increasingly interconnected through modes of communication and interaction that relay cinematic and moving images.

Through coursework students will develop specialized knowledge and critical understanding of multiple fields of cinema and media studies including genre, authorship, national and transnational cinemas, technologies of the image, and cultural theory. Students wishing to pursue careers in the cultural industries will have the opportunity for engaged learning in the areas of producing, marketing, the business of film, curating, and festival programming. In addition to practice-based workshops and specialized assignments, students can expect opportunities for placements and internships with a broad array of organizations, such as local film and media festivals such as TIFF and Images Festival, independent distribution companies, the National Film Board of Canada, the Ontario Art Gallery, film magazines and journals, independent production companies, archives, and many more.

• Our students pursue careers in the media industries, cultural organizations and/or academia.
• Our graduates in Cinema & Media Studies go on to study in master's and doctoral programs at universities throughout the world. 
• Throughout the year, the Norman Jewison Series features presentations by guest speakers from the industry, offering all majors an up-to-the-minute insider's look at the working world of film production, expanded cinema and media arts.
• York's Sound and Moving Image Library (SMIL) houses a multidisciplinary media collection available to the York University community for educational, research and personal use. SMIL collections include 100,000 CDs and DVDs for loan, 150,000 audio and video files for online access, and a large archive of historial formats for research.