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 2026, led by Steven...

by Nicholas Chad Roth This video essay was created for Professor DeRosa's Hollywood Western course (MEDA 213).

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 Competition at Mercy...

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 his touch. He was a...

by Isaiah Speller
The Gunfighter (1950) film encapsulates one’s deviation from being good and facing fatal consequences. Cowboys in earlier Westerns were portrayed as heroes who followed an honorable code, while this Cold War Western challenges the protagonist and the American audience. From both the movie and the events happening offscreen, it is easy to compare the tense environment of Cayenne to the United States emerging as a superpower following World War II.

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 to seek or obtain...

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 with both his narrative and innovative cinematic film techniques such as use of shadows, deep focus wide screen lens, story within a story flashbacks and more, while at the same time using his progressive political views in regard to the cultural and historical context of that time in effort to expose corruption and to bring forth social justice.

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 Jenny Fabrizio – 12...

by Gordon Ward — There are several reasons to class Django Unchained as a revisionist western, but perhaps the most obvious is the fact that the eponymous main character is African-American. Despite what some classic westerns would have you believe, a large number of people in the west at the time were black. There were black outlaws, black cowboys, and even some black lawmen like Django.