Also a long-standing member of the Directors Guild of America and the ASC, Dickerson inspires as one of Hollywood’s leading creative minds and is bringing his expertise to the Dorothy Hirshon Artist-in-Residence hosted by the School of Media Studies from February 24-26, 2025.

https://event.newschool.edu/2025hirshonlectureseries

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The 30 Best Film Schools in the U.S. and Canada in 2024

The New School, School of Media Studies and Film

(New York City)

Don’t let the name fool you. The New School, located in Greenwich Village, has been around since 1919. It offered the first college course to investigate the motion picture in 1926, and launched the first Media Studies MA program in the United States in 1975. Soon, the college will be among the first tackling a new game-changing form of media, artificial intelligence, by offering an MFA in Digital Film, AI and Emerging Media. Currently, students can embark on a fulltime two-and-a-half-year program for a Media Studies MA, or spend a year earning a Film Certificate or a graduate Documentary Certificate, all with a flexible, interdisciplinary open curriculum, tailored to students’ interests and needs. Maya Mumma, an editor on the Academy Award-winning documentary O.J.: Made in America and the more recent Max documentary Time Bomb Y2K, is a graduate of both the Media Studies program and the intensive Documentary Media Studies program. “I wanted a classroom environment where we learned how to think critically, where we discussed and wrote,” she said in a testimonial for the New School website. “You can understand how the software works, but if you don’t know how to tell a story — a good, authentic, and ethical story — you can’t make a good film.”

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peaCpUpwm2M

Christine Vachon is an Independent Spirit Award and Gotham Award winner who co-founded powerhouse Killer Films with partner Pamela Koffler in 1995. Over three decades, they have produced more than 100 films, including some of the most celebrated and important American independent features: KIDS, I SHOT ANDY WARHOL, HAPPINESS, BOYS DON’T CRY, HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, FAR FROM HEAVEN, ONE HOUR PHOTO, STILL ALICE, CAROL, BEATRIZ AT DINNER, and DARK WATERS. In television, Vachon executive-produced the Emmy and Golden Globe-awarded miniseries MILDRED PIERCE for HBO as well as the Emmy Award-winning limited series HALSTON for Netflix. Recent releases include Todd Haynes’ MAY DECEMBER (Netflix), starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, and Celine Song’s PAST LIVES (A24), which earned Vachon her first Oscar nomination in the Best Picture category this year.

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https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/09/christine-vachon-profile-past-lives-may-december-awards-insider

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Find out more about the film HERE.

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Media Management faculty and program director Neyda Martinez and alum Igor Myakotin (Doc Studies 2016) have been selected with their films by the Sundance Institute for its prestigious Producers lab:

Bartolo (U.S.A.)
Producing Fellow: Neyda Martinez
The lives of two women intersect through crisis after disasters due to climate change and government neglect decimate the impoverished mountainsides of western Puerto Rico. In the face of housing insecurity and economic inequality, will Jeanette and her community commit to Elisa’s nation-building activism to forge a new way forward?

Neyda Martinez is a producer whose films examine culture, equity, and social justice. Documentaries in production include Bartolo, A Chasm in Chinatown, and The People vs. Austerity. Past credits include Lucky and Decade of Fire. An Associate Professor at The New School, Neyda’s board service includes NYU’s Latinx Project, UPROSE and Women Make Movies.

Queendom (U.S.A. / France)
Producing Fellow: Igor Myakotin
​​​​Gena, a queer artist from a small town in Russia, dresses in otherworldly costumes and parades around Moscow to protest the government. It becomes a movement with a million followers she calls “drag activism” until she’s arrested and threatened to flee.

Igor Myakotin is an Emmy-nominated BAFTA-winning filmmaker who co-produced feature-length documentary Welcome to Chechnya (Sundance, Berlinale). He believes that cinema is not a way to escape reality but a way to embrace it with all its peculiarities, its darkness and depth.

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Jessica was also recently interviewed by Vogue magazine.

Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Jessica Kingdon – “Ascension”

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Sam Pollard is an accomplished feature film and television video editor, and documentary producer/director whose work spans almost thirty years. His most recent documentary, MLK/FBI was released this January to universal critical acclaim.

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Filmmaking is just one aspect of a larger industry — the mass media — and this 100-year-old university located in the heart of the media capital of the world offers a master’s program that will immerse students in studying the various mediums that share human stories through audio and visual elements. The two-year education is designed to be broad or specific, with a limited number of required courses, allowing a flexible curriculum catering to students’ interests. Take a deep dive into digital cinema production of documentary or narrative storytelling to learn the craft, or take the scholarly route to analyze, criticize and philosophize about the history and future of film. In addition to a fine faculty of diverse media professionals, students will have the opportunity to learn from modern masters through the Hirshon Director-In-Residence, which previously featured Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) and Oscar nominee Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild). “It’s a unique opportunity for students to learn from contemporary filmmakers in an intimate setting,” Vladan Nikolic, the dean of the School of Media Studies, tells MovieMaker. “The filmmakers are very open about their processes, and all it takes to get a film made, especially for those films that are personal and oftentimes difficult to get made. Students have regularly said afterward that they have been immensely inspired by the filmmakers, and that these master classes helped them in thinking about and shaping their own work.”

Hollywood Reporter:

The New School program is notable for its flexibility, which allows students — 80 percent of whom receive some type of merit-based university scholarship — to combine courses to fit their own interests. Ultimately, students graduate with either a master’s in media studies or entertainment management.

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Cited by Indiewire as one of the “exciting trans filmmakers shaking up Hollywood”. Sam’s films explore legacy, conflict, and futures within the queer and trans communities. Through all of Sam’s work they strive to set new standards for ethics in film production. Sam’s films have been programmed by Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, CPH:DOX, MOMA PS-1, The British Film Institute, The Hammer Museum, and in hundreds of film festivals around the world.

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