top of page

MIT offers free course named "The Film Experience"


Screen shot of the website

I was scouring the internet the other day and came across a peculiar headline, very similar to mine. You wouldn't typically see "MIT" and "film" in the same sentence, when I think MIT, I think science. I clicked the headline and it took me to an MIT website. Now me personally, I have sat through the equivalent

of 4 years of lectures on the topic of film. I'll be completely honest here, there's no way I will watch all of these. I have however, watched the first three (there are 23 videos, all between 45 minutes to an hour long). Essentially, I just pretended like I was listening to a podcast and just powered through them. It is a lecture, it is boring. The instructor does go off on unnecessary mini-tangents. However, for someone who doesn't have the time or money to attend classes structured around the art of film, this could be insightful for those who want to understand more of the theory behind it. Ohh, and you also don't have to write essays, meet deadlines, take exams, or worry about grades. So there's that as well..

Keep in mind, I haven't watched all of these, so whether you want to watch these or not is completely up to you. Even if you're not interested in watching the lectures, there was something else that caught my eye. You can watch classic movies (which the lectures are based around) for free. Birth of a Nation, being one of those films.

At this point, I figured this was the end of the gold mine that MIT offered in terms of learning about film. I was wrong! I clicked around on the website for a little while longer and also found a course called "Philosophy of Film" which only has 4 lecture videos, about an hour long each. The class is comprised of about 10 kids (no, I didn't actually count) and the course seems very lax in nature. Again, I won't be watching this, simply because I have already taken classes like this. Although I'm taking the stance to not take advantage of these resources, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't or that you won't learn something. Seriously, it's MIT. You'll learn something.

0 comments
bottom of page