Film Studies Course Listing

Below are our course offerings. Beyond this, please also see our Film Studies Courses, not all of which are offered in a given year.

Please consult the University Calendar for the official Film Studies Calendar listings. Our department also offers English and Creative Writing courses.

Film Studies Courses (2024-2025)

See Bear Tracks for scheduling of the courses listed below.

Fall 2024

FS 100 LEC A1, A2, A3, A4: Introduction to Film Study
Introduction to basic formal concepts in film analysis including mise-en scène, cinematographic properties, editing, and sound, as well as narrative qualities.

FS 201 LEC A1: Introduction to Film History I
L. Czach

The history of film has often been told as a narrative of classic films made by 'genius' directors. Yet, a truer history of the medium encompasses all kinds of material that was recorded on film--from home movies to educational films to feature-length fiction films. Although this course will focus primarily on the development of the narrative film it will question the traditional narrative of film as a sequence of masterwork films made by great filmmakers. We will examine the development of film from its beginning in the late 19th century up to 1950 as both an art form as well as a commercial product, and much that falls between. We will learn about key film movements, genres, development of film technique, but also some of the lesser-known figures, movements, and films which have been sidelined by traditional film histories.

FS 203 LEC A1: Television from Broadcasting to Screen Cultures
S. Tinic

Many people argue that television has been “revolutionized” in an age of technological convergence and streaming services. Yet there remains continuity amidst the radical shifts within the television industries. This course introduces students to the history of television broadcasting and the transition to a post-network era. It also provides an overview of the foundational theories of television criticism and issues of representation of race, gender, class, and sexuality in televisual storytelling.

FS 317 A1: The Gangster Film
T. Romao

A study of the gangster film genre in relation to its aesthetics and themes. We will also explore its historical development within American cinema as well as its world cinema instantiations and how the genre reflected social concerns over capitalism.

FS 321 LEC A1: Animation
L. Czach

This course will introduce students to international developments in film animation. The course is structured as a historical survey that will explore animation both as popular entertainment and as an art form. The course will move mostly chronologically from the classic pioneering animation of Winsor McCay and Emile Cohl through to animation innovators such as Lotte Reiniger, Norman McLaren, Len Lye, and Mary Ellen Bute before moving onto an analysis of animation produced under the studio system (Walt Disney, Warner Bros., UPA) while paying attention to the unique contributions of individual animators both within and outside of the studio system. Various forms of animated film will be explored such as cartoons, narrative films, abstract and experimental animation, and Japanese anime. You will be introduced to different animation production techniques such as pin screen, pixilation, cell, clay, collage, puppet, rotoscoping, scratch, painted, sand, limited animation, and computer animation.

FS 333 LEC A1: Experimental Film
B. Capper

What is an experimental film? This course will take up this question, asking how issues of history, identity, aesthetics, and geopolitical location have shaped and pressured the meaning of experimental film. Thus, rather than understanding experimental film as a clearly defined mode of filmmaking or charting a chronological history of experimental film, we will explore multiple approaches to – and genealogies of – experimental cinematic form, from surrealist and abstract film to underground and “third” cinema. Taking a conceptual and thematic approach, we will ask how experimental film has pressured the language of dominant cinema by both remaking and refusing realism, narrative, and various genres from the documentary to the musical. We will pay special attention throughout the course to the films and practices of Black, Indigenous, anti-colonial, feminist, and queer filmmakers, whose works have often been marginalized by, if not completely left out of, histories of experimental film.

FS 412 SEM A1: Working Hard, Hardly Working: Cinema and Labour
B. Capper

This course explores the changing condition of working life as it has been reflected in cinema. This course examines working life and non-working life from multiple perspectives, from more recognizable images of factory and white-collar work to representations of sex work, domestic labour, criminalized and informal work, and unemployment.

FS 412 SEM A2: Supernatural Media

This class considers the relationship of our media to questions of haunting and spectrality, and the way in which various modern media have been associated with the supernatural. Though it is mainly focused on cinema, it will also consider media like telegraphy, radio, photography, television, and the Internet. We will examine the metaphorical importance of the ghost for the persistence of traumatic histories, for the spiritual gulf created by our technologies of communication, and for the ghostly significance of cinema itself as a machine that raises the dead.

FS 416 LEC A1: Analyzing Television

Television was once referred to as a “cultural forum” in which producers would develop stories that incorporated aspects of the prevailing, and competing, social ideologies of the times based on expectations of audiences tuning into the same two or three networks daily. Today’s audiences are increasingly fragmented across an exponentially growing number of channels and streaming platforms that seem to cater to niche interests. Yet TV, wherever we may find it, is still seen to have an “ideological” dimension in how it selectively represents our cultural worlds. This course focuses on the central theories of television criticism through applied analysis of genre, spectatorship, aesthetics, and narrative frameworks in TV storytelling. Specific attention is given to the ways that the art-commerce divide in the creative process frames particular discourses of gender, ethnicity, class and sexuality.

Winter 2025

FS 100 LEC B1, B2, B3: Introduction to Film Study

Introduction to basic formal concepts in film analysis including mise-en scène, cinematographic properties, editing, and sound, as well as narrative qualities.

FS 202 LEC B1: Introduction to Film History II

A survey of world cinema from 1950 to present, with emphasis on major historical developments and important individual films.

FS 215 LEC B1: Introduction to Film Theory
General survey of major currents and debates in film theory, including early theories on the ontology of the film image, semiotic approaches to film as language, cognitive and psychoanalytic concepts of spectatorship, and emotion in film.

FS 318 LEC B1: Science Fiction Film
T. Romao

A study of the science fiction film genre in relation to its aesthetics, themes, and historical development. We will also explore its historical development and how the genre acted as an imaginative displacement of social and cultural concerns.

FS 324 LEC B1: Monsters, Slashers and Ghosts

The horror film is one of cinema's most durable genres, having gone through countless permutations over time. Often horror films are understood as being linked directly to the unconscious anxieties of the societies that spawn them – to understand a culture, we must know what it fears. Using a series of case studies, this course shows how horror can serve as a gateway into a fascinating set of historical and critical issues of race, gender, science, politics and more.

FS 341 LEC B1: Television Genres

Genres are categories that structure the narrative dimensions and audience expectations of any television series. These categories provide both constraints and opportunities for TV showrunners. This course analyzes the aesthetic and socio-cultural implications of various TV genres. Three to four of the following genres will be covered in alternating semesters: comedy (both multi-camera and single-camera), crime procedurals, sci-fi/fantasy, dramas, anthology series, soap operas, “dramedy,” historical fiction, action-adventure, thriller/mystery, animation, “art television,” and reality TV.

FS 399 LEC B1: Special Topics in Film Studies: Screenwriting (Combined with WRITE 399 and DRAMA 307)

This course introduces you to the essentials of screenwriting including concept, story, plot, dialogue and structure. Through analyzing scripts, films, and working on your own screenplay you will learn the fundamental components of screenwriting including how to develop an outline and synopsis, formatting, developing a character, writing effective dialogue, and constructing scenes and sequences. The goal of the class is to complete a 10 to 30-minute short fiction film script.

FS 412 SEM B1: Topics In Film Studies: Nontheatrical Film

This course examines the nontheatrical film, a capacious term referring to the thousands of films produced and screened in nontheatrical venues such as classrooms, community centres, churches, opera houses, museums, factories, and at home, amongst other spaces. These films took many forms including industrial, sponsored, educational films, home movies, amateur films, educational, religious, and sports films, to name a few. We will examine the historical and technological conditions that gave rise to the nontheatrical film and the many forms it took. We will also address how nontheatrical production enabled media makers shut out of the studio system to enter filmmaking.

FS 412 SEM B2: Topics In Film Studies: Indigenous Women's Media 

Indigenous women have been making screen-based work since the early days of cinema, but it took the work of Alanis Obomsawin, Shelley Niro, Christine Welsh, and others to make space for the current explosion of Indigenous women’s media in North America. Through a genre-based framework, the course will chart the way in which Indigenous women use the screen to engage with themes such as social justice and the land, violence against women, legal complexities, and relationality. Further themes are Indigenous women in the film industry, exploring innovation, participatory filmmaking, engagement with oral history, and Indigenous futurism. Media makers include but are not limited to the above, as well as Dana Claxton, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, Danis Goulet, Elle-Maija Tailfeathers, Asinnajaq, and Amanda Strong. As a Cree woman filmmaker, Tasha Hubbard will also provide students with a detailed look at the filmmaking process. Several filmmakers will be guests via zoom.

Courses outside of FS accepted as credit for the FS major/minor

EASIA 461 Occult Cinephilia: Contemporary Japanese Horror in Film

This class studies the historical context of cinephilia in Japan from which “J-horror” emerged. We will also analyze the contemporary J-horror canon in light of the filmmakers' own writings on film. In so doing, we will be tracing the lineage of cinephilia in Japan as an intellectual discourse, looking at the relationship between film theory and film production in contemporary Japan, and looking at J-horror from the perspective of filmmakers themselves.

ITAL 499 Italian Cinema
Stefano Muneroni

Explore the richness of Italian Cinema from the 1940s to today. Immerse yourself in timeless classics like Rome Open City and La Dolce Vita, as well as more contemporary films such as Life is Beautiful, and Call me by Your Name, and engage in critical discussions on directors, the legacy of Italian film, and genres like Neorealism, Italian-style Comedy, Spaghetti Western, and Horror. In-class lectures, screenings, guest speakers, and online discussions will provide you with a solid understanding of Italy's cinematic history and allow you to contextualize each film within Italy's history and culture. The syllabus will include selected films by Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Dario Argento, Lina Wertmuller, Liliana Cavani, Luca Guadagnino, Paolo Sorrentino, and others. 

Previous Offerings

2023-24 Fall and Winter Film Studies Courses

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