Undergraduate Film Courses 2023/24

An introductory study of film through an historical perspective of different film genres.

In addition to the lecture, students are required to attend a screening and a tutorial. Note that tutorials begin in Week 2.

In the introduction to animation course, students will be introduced to the exciting world of 3D modeling and asset creation. Creating high quality 3D assets is a skill that is becoming increasingly important in the film industry as more films incorporate emerging technologies, such as virtual filmmaking and digital avatars. Films are incorporating 3D design in their visual effects, set designs, stunts, pre-visuals, digital wardrobe, and title sequences. This has created a need for filmmakers to become proficient at Making, modifying and utilizing 3D models. This course introduces students to working in 3D software to create three dimensional objects, environments, and characters, using techniques like hard surface modeling, sculpting, physical based rendering of materials, neural radiance fields, projection mapping, and UV mapping.

A comparative study of the development of the techniques and themes in the work of at least three representative major film directors in the post-war international art cinema. Special consideration will be given to questions of the origins of the notion of the film director as "artist" and how and where the notion of an "art film" arises. Filmmakers to be studied may include Jean Cocteau, Ingmar Bergman, Yasujiro Ozu, Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnes Varda, K. Kieslowski, Wong Kar-wai, Fatih Akin, Andrea Arnold and Zacharias Kunuk.

Exclusion: FS243

A survey of Japanese cinema, including its history, formal and thematic innovations, major directors, and contemporary intersections with Japanese global popular culture. Theories of national cinema, postcolonialism, and media globalization will also be considered.

A study of themes and techniques of selected films from 1895 to 1950, in relation to their cultural, social and political contexts.

A study of themes and techniques of selected films from 1950 to the present, in relation to their cultural, social, and political contexts.

Exclusion: FS247

Tartan Films created the Asia Extreme label during the 2000’s as a way to market primarily J-Horror and K-Horror films in the UK and North American markets. However, extreme Asian cinema has a long cinematic tradition. This course examines Asian ghost, gothic, war, thrillers, slasher, and erotica films since the post-WWII period, by situating the development of the genre within the historical, regional, industrial, and socio-cultural contexts that gave rise to the different stylistic variations of the extreme Asian film genre. In addition to examining the thematic concerns and narrative structures of select extreme Asian films, we will also explore the cross-cultural and cross-regional flows of talent, capital, images and ideas. In order to ground our discussions of these processes, this course will interrogate extreme Asian films’ responses to modernization, nationalism, urbanization, wartime traumas, and globalization.

This course examines the work of women directors from the silent to the contemporary era, from a variety of film production contexts around the world, in the light of feminist approaches to questions about gender, representation, and authorship. Along the way, we will consider the extent to which formal and stylistic features may be said to characterize films directed by women; the ways in which films by women directors are shaped by historical, cultural, and industrial factors; different approaches to filmmaking within and outside the mainstream film industry; and the role of feminist film theory in critical studies of films by women. Assigned films may include work by Jane Campion, Claire Denis, Sophie Deraspe, Maya Deren, Mati Diop, Ava DuVernay, Joanna Hogg, Lucrecia Martel, Alanis Obomsawin, Léa Pool, Sally Potter, Dee Rees, Céline Sciamma, Agnes Varda, Lois Weber, and Chloé Zhao.

Exclusion: FS443k

A study of how Cold War politics shaped film production and distribution of films within a global context. The course moves beyond the bipolarized politics of communism versus democracy to explore how the global Cold War affected film production and reception within different local contexts. Themes covered in the course include censorship, defection, espionage, and the space race.

Exclusions: FS343c, FS309j

An introduction to the major theoretical debates around film and the analysis of film texts that emerged up to 1968. Theorists to be studied include Rudolph Arnheim, Andre Bazin, Sergei Eisenstein, Hugo Munsterberg, and Dziga Vertov.

A study of gothic/horror films as part of a genre or cultural narrative that both supports and subverts various political, economic, social and sexual hierarchies. Texts may be approached from a number of critical perspectives, including psychoanalytic, feminist and cultural theories.

Exclusion: FS343g

A study of the principles and techniques of digital non-linear video editing, including video capture, raw footage management, working with audio, and the compilation of clips into films for export and distribution.

Exclusions: FS309b and FS343d

This course examines the four elements of audio for film (dialogue, effects, soundscapes and music) and how they work together to support and enhance the visual elements of film. Students will engage in the hands-on construction of a short film soundtrack both by recording audio live and by sourcing audio from sound libraries. They will use both audio and video software and technology to manipulate the audio elements in order to create a cohesive, foundational-level soundtrack for a short film.

Important notes: This is a Conestoga College course that is being offered on Laurier’s Waterloo Campus. Registration opens on the Conestoga College website on July 9, at which point you can enter the course code ARTS1790 into the search box and register. At the same time, students must complete a WLU Letter of Permission form and submit it to our Registrar’s Office; upon completion of the course, students must submit a transcript request through Conestoga College so final grades can be sent to WLU.  For more details, please contact Dr. Jing Jing Chang, Film Studies Advisor.

This course offers a survey of key debates, theories, and interventions in queer theory and activism globally as it intersects with cinema and media studies. Beginning with pre-Stonewall gay cinema and experimental lesbian and POC cinema from the 1980s, we will explore an exciting roster of short and feature-length cinema from North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Filmmakers featured in this course include John Greyson, Prathiba Parmar, Marlon Riggs, Richard Fung, Isaac Julien, Thirza Cuthand, Wanuri Kahiu, and Midi Onodera. In each case, we will explore how films by these filmmakers (and others) are situated in and respond to historically and geographically situated queer theoretical and activist moments. In additional to weekly lectures and seminar discussions, students are required to attend weekly screenings.

Our tendency to become emotionally invested in films seems so obvious that we might readily dismiss one of cinema’s most wondrous capacities. Indeed, why do we cry, laugh, feel afraid, etc. at the movies, even (or perhaps especially) movies that we know to be fictional? While various answers to this question have been proposed over the last century, this seminar will explore recent studies in the psychology of cinema to explain how we engage emotionally with cinema, how movies invite us to feel empathic connections with characters, and how our affective experience shapes the ways we interpret information from the screen. Course topics include the structure of empathy and character identification, the paradox of horror, the rhetoric of disgust, and the onscreen representation of emotions. Along the way we will endeavour to develop a specific vocabulary for describing emotional responses to films. Assigned readings are likely to include Carl Plantinga, Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator's Experience, and selections from Noël Carroll, The Paradox of Horror; Murray Smith, Engaging Characters; Carl Plantinga, Screen Stories: Emotion and the Ethics of Engagement; and others. Assigned films are likely to include Interstellar, Pariah, Children of Men, Stella Dallas, Uncut Gems, and Dancer in the Dark. 

An introduction to the analysis of storytelling in film, including problems of adaptation, modes of narrative cinema ranging from the classical Hollywood film to the contemporary art film, and the role of visual and aural elements in filmic narration.

In addition to the lecture, students are required to attend a screening and a tutorial. Note that tutorials begin in Week 2.

An introduction to the analysis of the film image, with emphasis on the role of visual style (mise-en-scène, editing, cinematography) in relation to cinema's various historical, cultural and technological contexts.

Exclusion: FS100

In addition to the lecture, students are required to attend a screening.

An overview of Bollywood, one of the world's largest and the most prolific film industries. Consideration will be given to the history of Bollywood films, the global appropriation of cinematic techniques characteristic of Bollywood, and the influence of Bollywood on representations of India in Western and diasporic cinemas.

A study of themes and techniques of selected films from 1950 to the present, in relation to their cultural, social, and political contexts.

Exclusion: FS247

A study of Canadian film, from 1895 to the present, based on the screening and analysis of selected films.

A study of the detective film genre from the silent era to today, in relation to their sociohistorical context.

The Advanced 3D Animation course is designed for students who have already completed Introduction to Animation and are ready to take their skills to the next level. Visual effects and animation have been a part of the filmmaking industry since its beginning. 3D animation is used extensively in films, and this trend is only increasing, with many studios using virtual filmmaking as a part of their production pipeline. In this course, students will learn how to animate 3D models using the 3D software Blender. They will explore various animation techniques, including the Principles of Animation, how to rig and weight paint models, how to create simulations based on physics, and how to create motion graphics using procedurally based techniques, such as geometry nodes. Applying what they learn in the course, students will create dynamic and engaging animations that highlight both their creativity and expertise.

Pre-requisite: FS209b

A study of the representation of gender in film and gender theory through the reading of primary theoretical texts, secondary criticism, and the screening of films from a range of periods. Theorists to be studied include Judith Butler, Mary Ann Doane, Jane Gaines, Laura Mulvey, and Yvonne Tasker.

Exclusions: FS343s, FS362

This course will examine the ways in which film theory has changed in the digital age, including the shift from photographic to digital media in film production and reception, and the intersections between film and other digital new media, such as social media, video games, and smart phones.

Exclusion: FS447a

A study of the history and theory of film sound.

An advanced study of the principles and techniques of video pre-production, production, and post-production, specifically digital non-linear video editing.

Pre-requisites: FS370 or FS309b

Exclusion: FS309c

A study of screenwriting and pre-production techniques, including technical screenplay format, story structure for short and feature-length films, character development, pre-visualization, storyboarding, production planning, and blocking and rehearsing actors. Use of production and post-production equipment, including cameras and editing software, is not required.

Exclusions: FS309g

Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, Japan has been associated with futuristic technologies. Japanese robots, cyborgs, virtual idols, and nuclear monsters abound in our global cultural imaginaries. This course will explore how Japan’s futuristic image was created and maintained through the science fiction genre. It will examine Western works such as Johnny Mnemonic (1986) which represent Japan as a “futuristic Other” through the discourses of cyberpunk and Techno-Orientalism, as well as Japanese works that depict (and sometimes criticize) the national push towards technologized (post-)modernity, from classics like the Godzilla series (1954-pres.) to anime hits such as Fullmetal Alchemist (2001) and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2009).

This course examines the intersections between medicine, health, bioethics, and the cinema. On one hand, we use cinema as a prism through which to explore the history of medicine, the healthcare system, and the medical industry, and on the other, we will look at how topics such as disease and illness, pain and suffering, aging and dying, disability and activism, among others are addressed in feature-length films. In particular, this course is interested in asking what kind of cultural and moral work, if any, do these films do in our society. The fields of medical humanities and later health humanities emerged some forty years ago in response to an increasingly commodified health care system, alongside rapid technological and medical advances, whereby the needs and experiences of patients became overshadowed by the dehumanizing agendas of corporate and bureaucratic regimes. It is also prompted by the recognition of a lack of a module on empathy in the training of healthcare professionals, as well as a need to reintroduce a more compassionate healthcare delivery strategy that focuses on narrative, humanity, and compassion. Our focus on the history of the various filmic depictions of different aspects of medicine and health, broadly defined, will allow us to engage with not only how film and narrative represent ethical, moral, social and to a lesser extent legal issues surrounding medicine, medical research, and medical knowledge, but also the potential role of film in the delivery of healthcare, the making of public health policy and law, and the construction of discourses of medicine, health, and mortality in our society.