Moving images have the power to engage vast audiences, influence global cultures, and frame the way that entire populations perceive an increasingly complex world. The major in Film and New Media offers students the opportunity to study the arts and histories of international screen cultures with an equal emphasis on practical creative work and critical scholarly inquiry. In this multiplatform discipline, the major engages students with classic cinema, popular drama and comedy, animation, documentary, and mobile and interactive media. We offer theoretical and practical study of the key disciplines — including screenwriting, directing, cinematography, sound design, producing, editing, and distribution — employed in the collaborative process of visual storytelling. Employing a wide range of creative, technical, and intellectual skills, students create original content and study key aspects of a wide variety of film, television, and digital media. Projects range from traditional screen narratives in familiar genres to intensely experimental works.

Abu Dhabi is destined to become a global center of film, television, and digital media production. This development provides our students with a unique opportunity to explore the latest innovations, methods, and technologies that will shape the future of our media. The Film and New Media major promotes independent artistic and intellectual vision and celebrates the cross-pollination of academic disciplines and the arts. Students are encouraged to aspire to the status of the ancient storytellers, who made themselves indispensable to the tribe by performing the essential tasks of enriching lives, overcoming fears, and explaining the inexplicable. Over the centuries the tools and techniques may have changed, but the storyteller remains the guardian of the culture.