Visual learners will love our Slavic Cinema minor. It is like taking a domestic-based study abroad course or European vacation without leaving campus. Storytellers will love it as a way to discover new ways to reach and engage audiences. Fans of foreign culture, languages, and travel will enjoy it as a sampler for places they might like to visit. Historians will value it as a different way to see and feel cultural and social history. And students in science fields often say they love film courses because they are just so different from what they do on a daily basis in their other classes.

This is a dream minor for a Media School student pursuing a B.F.A. in Cinematic Arts or a Minor in Cinema and Media Studies, since each of these degree programs only requires one transnational cinema class. The Slavic Cinema minor allows you to take five such courses from one highly artistic macro-region of Europe, so you get a much deeper sense of how very different (and similar) these national cinemas can be. And you can do so without maxing out the credits you can take in your own program!

Students in inherently comparative fields like Comparative Literature, History, International Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Folklore, Linguistics, Ethnomusicology, and area studies will be able to apply the skills from their major to a new type of data set in order to discover their own connections with each new cinema class they take.

When you first venture into a Slavic film class, it can feel disorienting: the language, the humor, the visual culture, the storytelling style. But each of these regional cinemas has achieved high art status and international acclaim for their visual beauty, adept narratology, iconoclastic experimentation, guerilla resourcefulness, and dark humor and drama. And that makes it exciting: to be exposed in a structured way to something very different and be guided by a knowledgeable instructor to a deeper appreciation and broadening of your horizons that comes from stepping out of your comfort zone.

In our Slavic Cinema minor, you’ll:

• Develop an ability to analyze the artistic products of a culture and their historical contexts.
• Hone critical thinking skills.
• Build an understanding of visual communication.
• Appraise the creativity of filmmakers dealing with the constraints imposed by technology, political ideologies, financial resources, and changing audiences.

The raw material includes well over 50 innovative and award-winning films from a vast and critically important but woefully understudied macro-region in Europe.

You do not need any background in Slavic languages, Slavic cultures, or in film studies—our instructors are prepared to provide that. Class lectures are in English and all of the films have English subtitles. Cinema is a wonderful way to get to know a new culture and history, with the guidance of a passionate teacher. We encourage you to simply try one course early in your career to experience something new and something you can only get at an outstanding university as comprehensive, specialized, and unique as IU.

All of our cinema courses carry CASE Arts & Humanities and CASE Global Civilizations and Cultures credits. Please contact our academic advisor with questions about this minor.

Contact an advisor Learn more about the minor in our Student Portal