Film, Video, and Photography

This individualized process of creation, along with our internationally recognized faculty, excellent technical facilities, and staff support, ensures that Hampshire students can develop their fullest artistic visions along with the tools to produce them.

Students are given the necessary foundations in form,and technique while being encouraged to examine the critical contexts, debates and practices that will inform their artistic expression.

Student Project Titles

• Sea Shift/Memento Mori: a Photographic Installation
• No Fortunate One
• Domestic Taxonomies: A Film and Video Installation
• Through the Skin
• Roots in Concrete
• What We Lost in the Water
• In My Genes
• The Gravity of Our Wakefulness
• Come Home
• La Frontierra Chingada
• The Poetics of the Fragment

Sample First-Year Courses

• 16mm Film Sculpting in Time
• Photography I

Sample Courses at Hampshire

• Advanced Photography: Sequence/Structure/Juxtaposition
• Planet on Fire: Reimagining the Future of the World
• Breaking the Frame: European New Wave Cinemas of the 1960s and1970s
• Research and Creative Practice
• Documentary Practice: The Archive
• Exploring Photography in the Digital Realm
• Intro to Film Studies: History and Theory, 1895-1960
• Intro to Media Arts in Film, Photography, and Video
• Super 8 Filmmaking in Paris (summer course)
• Japanese Cinema
• Performance and Directing for Film and Video
• Text and Image: Writing for Film
• Photography and the East
• Recycled Images
• Still Photography I and II
• Women in Animation

Through the Consortium

• The Documentary Impulse

• Melodrama and Film Noir

• Contemporary World Cinema

Facilities and Resources

Film, Video, Photography Resources

Hampshire has black and white and color photography facilities that include two film developing stations to accommodate film processing up to 8"x10"; a Jobo processor dedicated for color film processing; a gang darkroom outfitted with ten enlargers; and five individual darkrooms, each equipped with a 4"x5” enlarger and a print developing sink. There are four UV-exposing units used for historic print processes and a well-appointed lighting studio. In addition to the analog work spaces, photography students have access to a multi-station digital lab with large format Epson printers and a selection of flatbed and dedicated negative scanners. There is also an advanced digital lab, reserved for Division III students, which includes an Imacon film scanner, a 44” wide Epson printer, and ample wall space to layout ongoing projects. There is also a dedicated installation room for used for critiques and for working on installation projects.

Hampshire also has three Steenbeck 16mm flatbed film editing stations, two optical printers, an Oxberry 16mm animation stand, and a digital stop-motion animation lab. Students have access to large and medium format photography cameras, 16mm Bolex and Arri film cameras, tripods, light meters, lights, lenses, and virtually any other piece of related equipment they might need. We have 12 video editing stations in the Liebling Center and 11 more in the library’s media basement that run Final Cut, Premiere Pro, and Da Vinci Resolve, a video studio for green screen cinematography, studio control room, and media labs.

The Media Services office coordinates booking of all films and videos in the Five College collections. It also loans video/digital, film, and photography production equipment, audio/visual equipment and takes reservations for film previewing rooms as well as offering film/video reference help.

Jerome Liebling Center for Film, Photography, and Video

A 6,700 sq. ft. addition to the Jerome Liebling Center for Film, Photography, and Video provides a large theater for 16mm and HD video; the Leo Model Gallery; digital transfer stations for regular 8mm, super 8mm, and 16mm film; a sound editing lab; an eight station media lab for video editing; a classroom for work in digital media, and faculty offices. It is structured around a curvilinear central gallery and circulation space.

The Tashmoo Lecture Series

The Tashmoo Lecture Series brings filmmakers, photographers, multimedia artists, critics, and historians to Hampshire College. Lectures and workshops led by successful artists and cultural historians expose students to a wide range of styles and techniques as well as contemporary debates in the visual arts.

Five College Film Council

The Five College Film Council, a group of faculty drawn from many disciplines, works to coordinate the study of film and video at all five campuses. They meet regularly to exchange information about courses and faculty, and plan a coordinated approach to meeting common needs for instruction. The council oversees the shared teaching duties of joint faculty and sponsors an annual festival of student film, held in the spring.