Featured Essays
New Digital Cinema Production Course for Fall 2026
Mercy University Media Studies Program Announces New Digital Cinema Production Course for Fall 2026 We are excited to share that Mercy University's Media Studies Program is planning to launch an innovative Digital Cinema Production course in Fall...
The Ox-Bow Incident: An Analysis
by Nicholas Chad Roth This video essay was created for Professor DeRosa's Hollywood Western course (MEDA 213).
4th Annual Student Screenwriting Competition Winners
Winners of the 4th Annual Mercy CATA Student Screenwriting Competition have been selected! Winning Screenplay Andrew Bisson – Bats Runners-Up Maleek Munroe – 1696 Nicholas Roth – RU-DUM The recent success of the 4th Annual Student Screenwriting...
The Wilder Touch
by Andrew Bisson Billy Wilder was a man of many talents, with a career spanning almost sixty years he has clearly earned his place as a master film maker. With many skills in writing, directing, and producing, every film he has created shines with...
Coming to Terms
by Isaiah Speller Henry King's The Gunfighter (1950) encapsulates one's deviation from being good and facing fatal consequences. Cowboys in earlier Westerns were portrayed as heroes who followed an honorable...
Meta-Media Cinema Series
Research shows that mass media has a significant impact on the career aspirations of college students, and in particular, the aspirations of minority students. (Cooper, 2013) While television, newspapers and social media outlets are frequently used...
Nostalgia and Social Justice: The Cinema of Orson Welles
by Veronica Boscia During a 1938 radio broadcast, Orson Welles stated “Almost all serious stories in the world are stories of a failure with a death in it. There is more lost paradise in them than defeat.” Welles tells these stories brilliantly...
Student Screenwriting Competition 2021 Winners
Winners of the first-ever Mercy CATA Student Screenwriting Competition have been selected! Winning Screenplay Reginald Agossa – The Incredibly Overwhelmingly Taxing Love Life of a 20 Something Superhero Runners-Up Tommie Cruz – Pillside Pharmacy...
Blood and Chains, New and Old
by Gordon Ward The cronut is a wondrous invention. Chef Dominique Ansel was a mad genius to think of combining the buttery flaky makeup of a croissant with the frying process of a doughnut. It takes a true visionary to combine two very different...
Bela Lugosi
by Johane Nozier It was a grim period for America during 1931 (Matthews, 2009, pg. 5). The Great Depression, the biggest economic crisis in the country's history, had negative effects throughout the land. Dracula (1931) was a perfect metaphor for...