Undergraduate Film Courses 2024/25

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.

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

Pre-requisites: One of FS101, FS102, or FS103

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

Pre-requisites: One of FS101, FS102, or FS103

Exclusion: FS247

A study of film noir of the 1940s-50s, with attention also to its antecedents and to more recent neo-noir variations.

Exclusion: FS352

A study of the science fiction genre in popular film. This course will focus on the development of the genre from silent to contemporary film. Consideration may also be given to science fiction as a literary and television genre.

Exclusion: FS343m

A study of Classical Hollywood film in terms of its film style, genres, and industrial practices.

Exclusion: FS343n

This course introduces students to 3D modeling and asset creation in relevant software, such as Blender. The course covers the creation of three-dimensional objects, environments, and characters, as well as learning techniques that include hard surface modeling, sculpting, physical based rendering of materials, neural radiance fields, and UV mapping.

Exclusion: FS209b

A study of the transnational character of films from East Asian countries such as China, Taiwan and Japan.

Exclusion: FS343t

An introduction to the major theoretical debates around film and the analysis of film texts that have emerged since 1968. Topics to be studied include semiotics and structuralism, Marxist theory, ideology and apparatus theory, psychoanalytic theory, feminist theory, poststructuralism, and post-classical cinema.

An exploration of the production of personal and social identities within the subjective and objective spaces of the postmodern city as represented in film.

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, FS343d

This course offers a focused study of stardom in Hollywood film. Stardom has been argued to be born when Florence Lawrence was revealed to be the “Biograph Girl” and America’s burgeoning film industry recognized the commercial value of film stars. Even today, most major national cinemas still rely on stars as the key attraction to films. This course is historical in focus, moving from the rise of the Hollywood Star System to stars’ independence in postclassical film and the power of celebrity today, thus exploring the cultural and institutional conditions that support it. The course, however, also explores the theoretical dimension of star studies (e.g., spectator subjectivity, social types, celebrity) that provides a critical lens through which to study stars. In addition, the course is driven by an emphasis on socio-cultural influences to examine the links between stardom and gender, sexuality, race, age, and national identity. While the course focuses on stars, we will also consider the other kinds of players who appear in front of the camera, including actors (respected talent who have not achieved star status) and performers (those who fill secondary roles). Relatedly, the course will explore questions about labor for the industry as well as performance onscreen. While the focus of the course will be on mainstream American cinema, students are encouraged to apply the theoretical and critical ideas from the course to explore questions and national cinemas beyond the course through their research papers.

This course examines the representation/mediation of the Holocaust in film and literature, both fiction and non-fiction, from the immediate postwar period to the present. The aim is to gain a solid understanding of the cultural-historical significance of the Holocaust while acknowledging the freedom of the author or filmmaker to approach this subject from a variety of different perspectives, set alongside ongoing debates (since Adorno) about the Holocaust’s relative ‘representability.’ At the same time, we will balance the moral-ethical status of the Holocaust’s artistic mediation against the costs of historical amnesia or collective forgetting. The student should come away from the course with an enhanced understanding of this event, alongside a recognition of the transformations in its representation/mediation over the passing decades, as the Holocaust moves from the embrace of living memory, ostensibly grounded in authentic recollection, into the larger realm of collective cultural memory. In the 21st century, cultural producers with no direct or lived connection to the Holocaust continue to attend to the genocide of Europe’s Jews that began with the Nazi’s seizure of power in Germany in 1933, became official policy with the conception of the ‘Final Solution’ in 1942, and ended (in principle) with the war in 1945. The latter part of the course will consider the lingering aftereffects of the Holocaust and renewed antisemitism in Europe and elsewhere, as filtered through the artistic sensibilities of the 2nd and now 3rd post-Holocaust generations. Topics of focus include: collective memory, traumatic memory, collective trauma, the relative (un-) representability of atrocity, the role of humour and irony, different media forms and the representation/mediation of the Holocaust (trans-/intermediality), the Holocaust and other histories of persecution (multi-directional memory).

*NB: Several course texts include descriptions and depictions of violence and human degradation, which may be disturbing to some students. It is expected that all discussions will be conducted with mutual respect and consideration for others.

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

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

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.

This course examines the industrial and critical intersections between food, foodways, and the cinema by focusing on the depictions of food as markers of personal, national, ethnic, cultural, and gender identities. We will look at how food and food ways—which include the complex beliefs and behaviors surrounding the performance, production, distribution, procurement, preparation, presentation, consumption, cleanup, and disposal of food—play a role in the development of character, narrative structure, and theme in films. When Japanese spaghetti western Tampopo (Itami Juzo, 1985) was first screened, it became an instant smash hit among audiences worldwide. Scholars have argued that the 1980s marked the emergence of food films as a discernible genre. However, food has been featured in notable ways even prior to the 1980s. One notable example is Lumière’s actuality Baby’s Breakfast (Repas de bébé, 1895). In this course we do not merely question how food is depicted, and what the social, cultural, economic, and political implications of these depictions are. More importantly, we ask whether films that focus on food and foodways broadly defined have both semantic elements and syntactical stability to constitute a “reel” food genre. This course will draw on the rich scholarship on food studies to investigate the cultural, industrial, aesthetic, and material dimensions of food and trace its shifting representations in films across different periods and genres.

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

Pre-requisite: FS101, FS102, or FS103

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

Pre-requisites: One of FS101, FS102, or FS103

Exclusion: FS247

A study of major works (with English subtitles) of the German cinema, from the silent period to the present.

Exclusion: GM246

A study of the business environment in which films and other media productions are financed, developed, produced and distributed.

Exclusion: FS209a

The doppelgänger—most often understood as an exact double of another living person—is a recurring trope in cinema, a medium whose photographic basis is said to enable the visualization of perfect doubles. This course considers both the presence of doppelgängers in film (e.g., characters, plotting devices, visual style) and the way in which cinema’s questionable status as “reality’s double”—particularly in the era of digital cinema—unsettles distinctions between original and copy.

A study of themes and techniques of selected films in Italian (with English subtitles) from silent film to the present, in relation to their cultural, social and political contexts.er.

Exclusions: FS337, IT324, IT337

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 film theory and criticism in relation to melodrama as both a film genre and a cultural mode. Theorists to be studied include Peter Brooks, Mary Ann Doane, Thomas Elsaesser, Christine Gledhill, Laura Mulvey, and Linda Williams.

A study of the tradition and evolution of the western in Hollywood film. The course explores the social, historical and economic contexts that define and shape the various trends and shifts in the western genre from silent film to today.

Exclusion: FS257

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

Exclusions: FS309c

This is an advanced course designed for students who have already completed FS272: Intro to 3D Animation or have a demonstrable background in 3D animation. In this course, students will learn how to animate 3D models using relevant 3D software like Blender to 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.

Pre-requisite: FS209b or FS272

Exclusion: FS309u

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.

Exclusion: FS309g

This course is a study of the representation, construction, and maintenance of national identities in a selection of films produced in Canada, with an emphasis on how diverse minoritarian cinemas (such as BIPOC and diasporic cinemas) may resist identifying as Canadian, may interrogate the tensions between feminist and nationalist discourses, and/or may advocate for a distinct nation within a nation. In this context, the term “antenational” signals a cinema that stands not “against” the nation but rather “before” the nation; the course therefore foregrounds fragments, differences, and incongruities rather than a coherent historical lineage or homogenous perspective on identity. Assigned films include Double Happiness (Shum 1994), Brown Girl Begins (Lewis 2017), Maliglutit (Kunuk 2016), Beeba Boys (Mehta 2015), among others.

This course explores avant-garde cinema as a marginal film practice with a distinctive mode of production, distribution, and exhibition, and with emphasis on historical and thematic developments in European, American, and Canadian film movements. The course considers avant-garde films in relation to their cultural, aesthetic, economic, and technological contexts, and affords special attention to parallel traditions in visual art, performance, and music, as well as to related theories of modernism, formalism, feminist theory and practice, pop culture, and subjectivity. Filmmakers studied may include Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, Hollis Frampton, Michael Snow, Kenneth Anger, Luis Buñuel, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Yvonne Rainer, among others.