The Film and Television Literacy requirement reflects the Motion Picture faculty’s commitment to educating graduate students and, in particular, facilitating their knowledge of how aesthetically, historically, and culturally relevant films and television programs have fostered the growth of the mediums of film or television, changed their course, and/or pointed to new directions relevant to emerging creative professionals.
To facilitate student education, and to encourage lifelong learning for anyone interested in media studies, this portal provides the Film and TV Literacy Screening List as well as supplemental, informational resources.
All M.F.A. students are responsible for viewing and familiarizing themselves with the films and television episodes on the Screening List below by their third year of study. As part of the degree requirement, each student are required to take a Literacy Examination covering the 130 titles on this list. Students are expected to have seen each film or television episode and be conversant—in general terms—about their aesthetic, historical and cultural significance.
To successfully fulfill the Literacy requirement, a grade of “B” (85%) or higher on the written examination is needed. Passing the one-hour Literacy Exam is a requirement for graduation. The test is usually administered to students in spring semester of their third year, under the supervision of the film studies faculty.
For students seeking DVD copies of materials, contact Carolyn Lopez at c.castro5@miami.edu, inquire at the CIM department desk, or visit the UM Otto G. Richter Library.
How to Access the Films
If you are a student of the Motion Pictures MFA program at the University of Miami School of Communication, you can access the collection by following these steps:
1.) Login to Blackboard through https://courses.miami.edu
2.) Once logged in, click on Motion Pictures MFA in the My Organizations section.
3.) On the organization page, click on the Films and TV Programs link in the left sidebar.
Feature Films (106 titles)
39 Steps, The (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935, 86 min)
400 Blows, The (Francois Truffaut, 1959, 99 min)
42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933, 89 min)
8 ½ (Federico Fellini, 1963, 138 min)
Aguirre, Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972, 93 min)
All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979, 123 min)
Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959, 160 min)
Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977, 93 min)
Awaara (Raj Kapoor, 1951, 82 min)
Awful Truth, The (Leo McCarey, 1937, 91 min)
Battle of Algiers, The (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1965, 121 min)
Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925, 66 min)
Best Years of Our Lives, The (William Wyler, 1946, 172 min)
Bicycle Thief (Vittorio de Sica, 1948, 93 min)
Big Sleep, The (Howard Hawks, 1946, 114 mins)
Birth of a Nation, The (D. W. Griffith, 1915, 165 min)
Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967, 111 min)
Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960, 90 min)
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1919, 67 min)
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942, 102 min)
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974, 130 min)
Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin, 1961, 85 min)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941, 119 min)
City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931, 87 min)
City of God (Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund, 2002, 130 min)
Claire’s Knee (Éric Rohmer, 1970, 105 min)
Cleo from Five to Seven (Agnes Varda, 1961, 90 min)
Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner, 1940, 90 min)
Dante’s Inferno (Ken Russell, 1967, 91 min)
Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson, 1951, 95 min)
Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975, 125 min)
Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989, 120 min)
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (Bruno Barreto, 1976, 110 min)
Don’t Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker, 1967, 96 min)
Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying … (Stanley Kubrick, 1963, 95 min)
Fargo (Coen Brothers, 1996, 98 min)
General, The (Buster Keaton, 1926, 107 min)
Godfather, The (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972, 175 min)
Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990, 146 min)
Graduate, The (Mike Nichols, 1967, 106 min)
Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937, 114 min)
Harlan County, USA (Barbara Kopple, 1976, 103 min)
Headless Woman, The (Lucrecia Martel, 2008, 87 min)
High School (Frederick Wiseman, 1968, 75 min)
Hyenas (Djibril Diop Mambety, 1992, 110 min)
Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952, 143 min)
Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959, 125 min)
In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000, 98 min)
It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934, 105 min)
L’Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960, 143 min)
Last Picture Show, The (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971, 118 min)
Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961, 94 min)
Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949, 108 min)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948, 86 min)
Lives of Others, The (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006, 137 min)
Los Olvidados/The Forgotten Ones (Luis Buñuel, 1950, 80 min)
M (Fritz Lang, 1931, 99 min)
Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929, 68 min)
Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944, 113 min)
Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968, 97 min)
Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927, 153 min)
Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati, 1957, 117 min)
Morocco (Josef von Sternberg, 1930, 92 min)
Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922, 79 min)
Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975, 159 min)
Old Boy (Park Chan-Wook, 2003, 120 min)
On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954, 108 min)
Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960, 101 min)
Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966, 83 min)
Piano, The (Jane Campion, 1993, 121 min)
Primary (Drew Associates, 1960, 60 min)
Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994, 154 min)
Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955, 111 min)
Red (Krsysztov Kieslowski, 1994, 99 min)
Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945, 103 min)
Salesman (Albert & David Maysles, 1969, 85 min)
Scarface (Howard Hawks, 1932, 93 min)
Searchers, The (John Ford, 1956, 119 min)
Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954, 207 min)
Sherman’s March (Ross McElwee, 1986, 157 min)
Some Like it Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959, 120 min)
Sorrow and the Pity, The (Marcel Ophuls, 1971, 251 min)
Star Wars Episode IV: The New Hope (George Lucas, 1977, 121 min)
Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927, 94 min)
Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950, 110 min)
Sweet Smell of Success, The (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957, 96 min)
Thin Blue Line, The (Errol Morris, 1988, 103 min)
Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs, 1989, 55 min)
To Live (Zhang Yimou, 1994, 125 min)
Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935, 101 min)
Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958, 95 min)
Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948, 126 min)
Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932, 83 min)
Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953, 96 min)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958, 128 min)
Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008, 98 min)
West Side Story (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961, 152 min)
White Ribbon, The (Michael Haneke, 2009, 144 min)
Wizard of Oz, The (Victor Fleming, 1939, 102 min)
Woman Under the Influence, A (John Cassavetes, 1974, 155 min)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988, 90 min)
World of Apu, The (Satyajit Ray, 1959, 105 min)
Xala (Ousmane Sembene, 1975, 123 min)
SHORTS (7 shorts)
Chien Andalou, Un (Luis Buñuel & Salvadore Dali, 1929, 16 min)
Illusions (Julie Dash, 1988, 34 min)
La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1963, 28 min)
Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1944, 14 min)
What’s Opera, Doc? (Chuck Jones, 1957, 7 min)
Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage, 1962, 13 min)
Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers (Nick Park, 1993, 30 min)
TELEVISION (29 titles)
All In The Family – “Sammy’s Visit” (1971-1979, 30 min)
Breaking Bad – “Season 1, Episode 1” (2008-2013, 45 min)
Boardwalk Empire – “Two Impostors” (2010-2014, 55 min)
Cheers – “Christmas Cheer” (1982-1993, 30 min)
Cosby Show, The – “Night Time Is The Right Time” (1984-1992, 30 min)
Deadwood – “Deadwood” (2004-2006, 55 min)
Dick Van Dyke – “That’s My Boy” (1961-1966, 30 min)
Father Knows Best – “A Day In The Country” (1954-1960, 30 min)
Fugitive, The – “Detour On A Road Going Nowhere” (1963-1967, 51 min)
Game Of Thrones – “Baelor” (2011-present, 55 min)
Good Wife, The – “Ham Sandwich” (2009-present, 60 min)
Hill Street Blues – “Hill Street Station” (1981-1987, 60 min)
Honeymooners, The – “The $99,000 Answer” (1955-1956, 30 min)
House Of Cards – “Season 1, Chapter 4” (2013-present, 55 min)
I Love Lucy – “Lucy Does A Television Commercial” (1951-1957, 30 min)
Mad Men – “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” (2007-present, 45 min)
Mary Tyler Moore Show – “The Last Show” (1970-1977, 30 min)
M*A*S*H – “Hawkeye” (1972-1983, 25min)
Peyton Place – “Season 1, Episode 1” (1964-1969, 30 min)
Roseanne – “Language Lessons” (1988-1997, 22 min)
Roots – “Season 1, Episode 8” (30 min)
Seinfeld – “The Contest” (1989-1998, 22 min)
Simpsons, The – “Special Edna” (1989-present, 22 min)
Sopranos, The – “College” (1999-2007, 55 min)
St. Elsewhere – “Cora and Arnie” (1982-1988, 60 min)
Twilight Zone – “Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up?” (1959-1964, 51 min)
Twin Peaks – “Season 1, Episode 1” (1990-1991, 47 min)
Upstairs/Downstairs – “The Mistress and the Maids” (1971-1975, 60 min)
Wire, The – “Final Grades” (2002-2008, 55 min)