Rate My Professor Joshua Sikora

Joshua Sikora serves as Professor of Cinema and New Media Arts, Chair of the Department of Narrative Arts, Director of Graduate Programs for the School of Fine Arts, Director of Cinema and New Media Arts, and Program Coordinator for Screenwriting (MFA) and Narrative Arts (BA) at Houston Christian University. He holds an MFA in Studio Art from Houston Christian University and a BA in Film/Television/Radio from Biola University. Prior to joining Houston Christian University, Sikora served as an adjunct professor at Biola University, teaching film and new media in the Torrey Honors Institute and Cinema & Media Arts Department. In 2005, he founded New Renaissance Pictures, partnering with Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube for web-based productions. In 2007, he created WebSerials.com, an online network hosting serialized media such as the series “The Black Dawn.”

In 2013, Sikora founded the Cinema & New Media Arts program at Houston Christian University, which has grown to encompass five degree programs at undergraduate and graduate levels, including the MFA in Screenwriting. His research specializations include low-budget filmmaking, independent cinema, online media development, and new media production workflows, with scholarly focus on directors Terrence Malick, George Lucas, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Hayao Miyazaki. He edited A Critical Companion to Terrence Malick (2020), contributed to A Critical Companion to Stanley Kubrick (2020) and A Critical Companion to Steven Spielberg (2019), and co-authored Digital Media in Today’s Classrooms (2016). Sikora is an award-winning filmmaker whose select credits include executive producing Manifest Destiny (2016) and “The Seventh Spectrum” (2013–2014), creating “The Tesla Archive” TV pilot, directing and writing the Cataclysmo TV series, Best Laid Plans (2010–2011), The Black Dawn series (2009), Project X (2007), and producing The Way That I Take (2020). Awards include the Gold Remi at the 49th Annual Houston International Film Festival and Piper Professor recognition in 2021. Through mentorship, he cultivates student skills in creativity, communication, collaboration, and the pursuit of goodness, truth, and beauty.