The Notre Dame film record — the department, the student festival, and Fighting Irish Media

1990–present · the campus as a film school and a production house

The department and its festival: The campus whose cooperation the Hollywood productions of the earlier entries needed has, since the turn of the century, made filmmakers of its own. The Department of Film, Television, and Theatre took its present name and form in 1998–99, in its own chronology's words, to reflect more accurately the academic and creative interests of the department. Its engine is the Notre Dame Student Film Festival, which screens the films undergraduates make in the department's production courses: founded by faculty member Ted Mandell — the department's chronology places the first festival in the 1989–90 year, its festival pages say founded in 1990, and both forms print — and maintained since, with an archive of every featured film kept by Todd Boruff and Mandell himself. The festival's own billing of its harvest is the documented measure of the program: it has featured the first films of future award winners from Sundance to the Emmys — Peter Richardson, whose How to Die in Oregon won the Sundance Grand Jury Award in 2011, and John Hibey, whose Fishing Without Nets won Sundance's short filmmaking jury award in 2012, both began on its screen. Audience members have voted the Audience Choice Award by text message since 2013, and the department's current listing bills the festival's thirty-eighth annual edition — a student festival older than the century's student filmmakers, run continuously on the campus where, for fifty-two years, no outside feature was allowed to shoot at all.

Fighting Irish Media: The university's second production house is its athletics arm. Fighting Irish Media was founded in 2011 as Fighting Irish Digital Media, by a small group headed by Dan Skendzel, the university's director of digital media, and it produces the athletics department's broadcasts, live videoboard shows and video features from its campus studios. Its largest production is a documentary series: Here Come the Irish, which follows the Notre Dame football team on and off the field through a season — produced by Fighting Irish Media with the athletics department's own staff among its executive producers — released on Peacock across the 2024 season, and renewed: the second season's premiere was announced for 8 December 2025 in Peacock's own release. The form closes the section's longest arc. In 1931 the university sent a writer's three weeks of atmosphere back to Universal City and let Hollywood make its picture; in 1992 it admitted TriStar's cameras for six weeks, on its own terms; since 2011 it has simply made the films itself, and distributed them on a national streaming service.

Sources

1. Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, University of Notre Dame (ftt.nd.edu) — the department archive and chronology (the department created in its present form, 1998–99; the first Notre Dame Student Film Festival in 1989–90, founded by Ted Mandell); the festival pages (founded by Ted Mandell in 1990; the archive of featured films since inception, maintained by Todd Boruff and Mandell; the first films of Peter Richardson and John Hibey and their Sundance awards; the audience text vote since 2013; the thirty-eighth annual edition in the department's current listing).
2. Fighting Irish Media, the company's published history — founded 2011 as Fighting Irish Digital Media by the group headed by Dan Skendzel; the production of national and regional broadcasts, social video and videoboard shows.
3. Peacock / NBCUniversal releases (The Futon Critic), August 2024 and November 2025 — Here Come the Irish as a Peacock Original docuseries on the Notre Dame football team; the second season's premiere of 8 December 2025. University of Notre Dame Athletics (fightingirish.com and the department's postings) — Fighting Irish Media as the series' producer, with athletics staff among its executive producers.