“It doesn’t work without the strong support of the administration and also the support of faculty, and...considering what others have been able to do at Harvard in the last five or six years I think those things are there,” he said. “The students are always willing, that’s never the problem.”

Rodowick said he felt this has not always been the case at the College.

“Quite frankly, I think it’s a fairly new development,” he said. “I think Harvard probably watched what we’ve been doing at Yale for quite some time.”

Colleagues said Rodowick was likely to strengthen Harvard’s growing film studies program with his breadth of experience and interdisciplinary skill.

“It’s a great hire because Rodowick both has a specialty but also has the ability to teach a wide array of courses from that,” Connor said.

“You could grow the faculty by leaps and bounds around Rodowick” without making him obsolete or marginalizing him, Connor added.

Rodowick said that one of the biggest questions remaining to be answered as Harvard plans a graduate curriculum in film studies is how to balance the practice of filmmaking with its theory and criticism—a balance traditionally struck, if shakily, by the dual-natured VES department. In this, too, Rodowick—who Rentschler said earned “a sort of underground reputation among film studies people” with the experimental films he made as a student in Austin—has a broad range of experience.

“I originally came from an arts background, and I thought before I came to Yale I’d always have a dual career as an experimental filmmaker as well as a theoretician, as it were,” Rodowick said. “I enjoy working in a milieu with such a high degree of creativity here.”

—Staff writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.