The CU Boulder Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts has made The Hollywood Reporter’s list of the top 25 film programsin the nation.

The department, formerly the Film Studies Program at the University of Colorado Boulder, hailed the recognition by the top trade journal in the movie industry. 

“For an academic unit like ours, this is comparable to a mention in the US News & World Report—at least for minor bragging rights,” said Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz, professor and chair of the department.

He continued: “This humble feather in our cap joins the list of honors such as the Film Society of Lincoln Center naming in 2010 five of our faculty among most important experimental filmmakers of the last decade, and our naming as ‘Best in the West in Cinematography’ by MovieMaker magazine in 2017.”

Muñoz added, “Yes, we came in at #25 among the ‘Top 25,’ but we’ll take it.”

In June, the CU Board of Regents voted to rename the Film Studies Program and to grant it the status of a department. 

Acevedo-Muñoz said the move made de jurewhat is already the de factoplace of the unit in the College of Arts and Sciences. 

At the time of the vote, he added, “Our students are better served graduating from a department rather than a program, which might be erroneously perceived as having somewhat lesser standards or rigor.”