When I looked at Morehouse, I saw that it had a newly formed program called Cinema Television and Emerging Media Studies. I was intrigued because I had been looking at various schools, potentially looking for film and/or art programs. I also was very interested in the HBCU experience and wanted to see what a Black collegiate experience was like. The Cinema Television and Emerging Media Studies (CTEMS) program at Morehouse focuses on screenwriting but also looks at African-American Cinema, the history of film, and the business of Hollywood. It was the best of both worlds: the study of film at an HBCU. The CTEMS program is still in its young stages but is exponentially growing in its scale and scope. I am excited to be a part of the program but it still raises the question: why do I study film?
When I was younger, I always loved watching cartoons. (I still do love watching them today if we’re being completely honest). Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, PBS Kids, 4Kids TV, were all channels that I watched with a discipline that that bordered devotion. My father encouraged me, as I got older, to not simply consume media but begin to create my own works. So I did that. In the fourth grade, I began to create my own little comic books in my spare time during class. I would show them off to my classmates, and love their reactions as they read the. As I continued to grow, I began to write as well, producing a couple of short screenplays, with one placing in a local competition.
At my core, I am a storyteller. And stories, have and always will be important to the human experience, even if we do not recognize them as such. Through my writing, drawing and film, I am a documentarian, an archivist, a comedian, a politician, a propagandist, a hypnotizer. For an hour and a half, someone captures your attention on the silver screen and can tell you anything they want you to. We underestimate the power of film and television. The first American cinematic masterpiece is The Birth of A Nation, a film which solidified racial stereotypes about African Americans which we deal with today and was the impetus for the resurgence of the Klu Klux Klan. The popular television series A Different World, increased enrollment rates at HBCUs across the country while it was on the air. The stories we tell matter and have a real impact on the world around us. They not only shape pop culture, they shape society at large. That is why I study cinema. If you can control what people watch on their televisions, phones, and in the theaters, you have a potential to make a large impact on the world.
