At the heart of the Skirball Center for New Media is the Department of Cinema Studies, one of the first university departments in the world devoted to the history, theory, and aesthetics of film and the moving image. The Department offers programs leading to the B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in cinema studies, and the M.A. in moving image archiving and preservation. The Skirball Center also houses the William K. Everson Film Collection, containing over 4,000 feature-length films and a like number of short subjects spanning every filmmaking genre, along with an extensive manuscript collection of original scripts, autobiographical materials, correspondence and ephemera; the holdings are particularly strong in materials documenting the silent film era. The Skirball Center recently underwent major renovations and offers state-of-the-art facilities for the study of film and the moving image.
