The Cinema Studies Institute emphasizes the study of cinema by focusing on film history, film theory, and film analysis. The Institute offers a limited number of courses in production, though many of our students have found our program useful in preparing them for a career in the film industry. Our regularly offered production-based courses are CIN230H1 - The Business of Film, CIN349H1Y - Screenwriting, CIN365H1 - Studies in Cinema and Media Practice, CIN369H1 - Critical Writing on Film, and CIN433Y1 - Sensory Ecologies: Theory and Praxis in Environmental Media Studies.
You can read about how our alumni have used their undergraduate and graduate degrees in Cinema Studies to find careers in the film industry and beyond in the articles below.
Please also check out the CSI 50th Anniversary Screening Series in which noted alumni present a film then discuss it with a faculty member.
The University of Toronto also offers tools for career learning and exploration such as Career Start, Career Navigator, and Career & Co-Curricular Learning Network.
2025 Careers after Cinema StudiesA recording of the event that took place on Thursday, January 23, 2025 will be shared here. Matt Devlin is Managing Director, Marketing Science and Strategy at PHD Media. He works with some of Canada’s top advertisers, helping them use marketing science to frame their approaches to data and technology– and strategy to know when the best answer isn’t in the data. Matt completed a Cinema Studies Specialist in 2001. Alicia Fletcher is the writer and producer of Hollywood Suite's original series A Year in Film and Cinema A to Z. She is a member of the Visual Researchers Society of Canada and the Toronto Film Critics Association. Alicia's film curation is featured at TIFF Cinematheque and the Revue Cinema. Alicia completed a Minor in Cinema Studies in 2007, then an MA at CSI in 2008. Emily Reid lives and works in Toronto and is a graduate of the Cinema Studies Institute (M.A. 2010) and a curator of film and public programming with 15 years' experience in the field of arts management, programming, and cultural partnerships. She is Quebec-born and raised, in the Ottawa area where she completed her B.A. Honours in Film Studies and Art History. Her move to Toronto for the CSI programme led her to roles in programming and marketing at TIFF, Hot Docs, Historica Canada and the Revue Cinema. She is the founder and Artistic & Executive Director of Toronto Outdoor Picture Show, a charitable arts and culture organization that is dedicated to presenting high quality, accessible programming in public spaces across Toronto. The festival will present its 15th anniversary season in 2025. |
2024 Careers after Cinema StudiesAlaine Hutton is part of a performing/writing/directing/designing duo with a decade of shared training in physical performance and making people uncomfortable. They create questionably comedic theatre, film, and “digital not otherwise specified”, often revolving around the internet ruining our brains, distorting our sexualities, and how we can’t stop looking at it. You can watch their speculative fiction/ cringe comedy series Content Farm streaming on CBC Gem. Alaine graduated with a Minor in Cinema Studies in 2011. Dylan Rykse is the Senior Media Specialist at Media Commons. In this role, he manages the film collections and screening rooms at Robarts Library. Prior to his current position, he was the Reference Specialist at the University of Toronto Music Library and a librarian at the Toronto Public Library. He graduated with a Major in Cinema Studies in 2016. Theresa Wang is a curator and writer based in Toronto where she is currently Director & Curator at Mercer Union, a centre for contemporary art. Her practice considers ways in which narratives are destabilized and reconfigured, and is particularly interested in questions pertaining to concepts of truth, knowledge, meaning, and memory. She was recently Associate Curator & Registrar at Oakville Galleries, where she organized exhibitions with Diedrick Brackens, Timothy Yanick Hunter, Julia Brown, and Elif Saydam, and the group exhibition Two Truths and a Lie (2022). She has held curatorial and audience development positions at institutions including the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Gardiner Museum, and Musée d’art contemporain, Lyon. Her writing on contemporary art and cinema has been featured in publications and galleries, such as C Magazine, ArtAsiaPacific, BlackFlash, MUBI Notebook, Screen Slate, Franz Kaka, and Trinity Square Video. As an independent curator, she organized the projects Written in Water at Hearth Garage (2021), Everything Worthwhile at Vector Festival (2021), and co-curated Soft Refractions at Xpace Cultural Centre (2019). She is an alumna of the 2021 Professional Alliance for Curators of Color (Association of Art Museum Curators, New York) and the recipient of a 2022 Galeries Ontario / Ontario Galleries Exhibition Award. Theresa graduated with a Minor in Cinema Studies in 2018. |
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Many of our students pursue film related extracurricular activities at the University of Toronto: