Picture Perfect

Conn officially opened the Stark Center for the Moving Image in the Liberal Arts in October

With a snip of the ceremonial ribbon on Oct. 28, Connecticut College officially opened the Stark Center for the Moving Image in the Liberal Arts, a 2,500-square-foot vibrant new home for Film Studies funded by a $1.5 million gift from The Fran and Ray Stark Foundation.  

“The Stark Center for the Moving Image in the Liberal Arts serves as the first-ever centralized social and academic hub for one of the fastest-growing majors and fields of study at the College,” said Professor of Film Studies and Chair of the Film Studies Department Ross Morin ’05. “It allows Conn to offer, for the first time, our own state-of-the-art editing lab, a versatile production studio and an advanced film studies seminar room to enable our students to pursue their creative and scholarly visions in the Department of Film Studies.”

Located in one of Conn’s longest-standing buildings, Hillyer Hall, the Stark Center seamlessly folds the high-tech into the College’s existing architecture. Established as the campus’s first social space in 1917, Hillyer is also home to the Tansill Black Box Theater, providing ample opportunities to bring film studies and theater faculty and students together in new ways for creative thought and collaboration.

The centrally located facility continues a strong history of support for film studies at Conn by the Stark Foundation. While film studies was first introduced as a minor in 1989, a $300,000 grant from the Stark Foundation in 2002 allowed the College to develop a film studies major integrating film theory, criticism and production and providing students with a sophisticated understanding of mediated imagery as it relates to our increasingly image-saturated culture. Additional grants from the Stark Foundation totaling more than $600,000 have supported the Stark Distinguished Guest Residency in Film Studies, which brings leading scholars and filmmakers to campus for intensive engagement with students.

“As one of the taglines of the program states: Studying film at Conn is like film school, but better, because it is where a critical theoretical lens, interdisciplinary engagement and larger questions of self and society meet first-rate filmmaking opportunities,” Dean of the Faculty Danielle Egan told the audience of students, faculty, staff, trustees and friends of the College gathered at the ribbon cutting and dedication event.  

“The new Stark Center for the Moving Image provides our students with something we could not have imagined when the program began 21 years ago: state-of-the-art production and viewing spaces where students can think, create and critique their work. It will change our students’ thinking, analyzing and producing … It will change their understanding of film studies in powerful ways.”