About | Interdisciplinary Programs

You Can Be a Visual Storyteller

Lehigh’s Film and Documentary Studies Program offers interdisciplinary training in the diverse fields of visual culture, storytelling, and documentary studies. Students explore film traditions from various nations and historical eras, learn to interpret visual narratives, and produce their own filmic projects. Our course offerings help students learn to appreciate the complexities of communicating in different mediums. Faculty emphasize the importance of learning to convey effective messages visually, audibly, and through written texts, and the study of film helps us appreciate the power of synthesizing these mediums.

Film and Documentary Studies also readies individuals to convey stories and meanings in various ways. Our courses teach students to message visually as well as audibly, providing multiple avenues to reach potential audiences and clients. This training has become extremely valuable for today’s careers in business, including jobs in advertising and marketing, where professionals must communicate to clients in diverse manners and with various tools.

Explore our Minors

Minor in Film Studies

Minor in Documentary Storymaking

An Overview of Some Major Film Movements

Hollywood Classics

Victor Fleming’s 1939 American film is regularly taught in Introduction to Film to demonstrate how film narrative develops and functions. Wizard of Oz illustrates the formal operations of narrative, the intersections of various characters, and the importance of filmic motifs.

The Golden Age of Japanese Cinema

Lehigh’s Film Studies minor asks all students to study non-English-language cinema. Professor Nobuko Yamasaki, for example, introduces students to the rich tradition of Japanese film, and often teaches Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai to consider post-war culture.

American Masterpieces

Orson Welles is one of America’s most foundational film directors. In Introduction to Film, students often screen Citizen Kane to study Welles’s development of deep focus––a technique of cinematography that allowed him to keep subjects in the foreground and the background in focus.

German Expressionist Horror

Considered the first vampire film in history, Nosferatu is not only a classic of German cinema but of the horror genre. F.W. Murnau’s films of the 1920s were an inspiration for the style and narratives of modern-day horror cinema and is explored in Professor Olivia Landry’s German Horror Film course.

French Surrealist Film

Students can explore the mystery of cinematic time in Alain Resnais’s enigmatic 1961 French film Last Year at Marienbad often taught as part of Professor Marie-Sophie Armstrong’s French Cinema Classics course.

Italian Classics

No study of film, and especially cinematography, would be complete without Federico Fellini’s 8 ½, an Italian surrealist film from 1963. This film is frequently studied in Introduction to Film.

Hong Kong Melodramas

Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) is a masterpiece of highly-stylized slow cinema and a wonderful medium for investigating music (melos) in film. Professor Thomas Chen teaches this film as part of his course Understanding Hong Kong.

Watch Student Projects!