Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

Course Outlines

Fall 2025 - CA 333 D100

Film Forms (3)

Liminal Lensing: Between Lives & Imagination

Class Number: 7434

Delivery Method: In Person

Overview

  • Course Times + Location:

    Sep 3 – Dec 2, 2025: Tue, 10:30 a.m.–1:20 p.m.
    GOLDCORP

  • Prerequisites:

    36 units in CA courses, including CA 285.

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Intensive study of a specific approach to film praxis, in which students create projects through experimentation with film form. This course can be repeated once for credit if the topic is different. This course cannot be taken concurrently with other Film Form courses.

COURSE DETAILS:

This course challenges traditional filmmaking models by exploring the potential of experimental, process-driven, and non-hierarchical co-creation with non-actors—not as subjects to be directed or documented, but as active collaborators in the making of imaginative and ethically grounded films. Our focus will be the fertile liminal space where dream, fiction, and ethnographic observation converge: territory that resists easy classification and rewards creative risks.

Structured as a collaborative lab, the course combines hands-on workshops, sensory exercises, guest talks, and discussions. We will engage with contemporary films and key texts in experimental ethnography to build a rigorous critical, ethical, and aesthetic framework for this unconventional approach to filmmaking.

In this supportive environment, you will put that foundation into practice. Working independently, you will partner with community members of your choosing to conceptualize and produce a short film rooted in lived experience and shaped by imagination, improvisation, and shared discovery.

The course emphasizes creative resilience, encouraging you to treat limitations as generative constraints. Embracing the freedom afforded by accessible, lightweight technology, you will learn to craft films that are both formally inventive and artistically accomplished—connecting to a rich lineage of cinema that continues to expand the possibilities of the art form. To support your future work, the course provides practical guidance on grant writing and production strategies tailored to this radical practice.

Ultimately, this course invites you to reimagine authorship, embrace uncertainty, and become a more resourceful, collaborative, and ethically attuned filmmaker—while deepening your sense of what cinema is, and what it can do. Students from all backgrounds are welcome. No prior filmmaking experience is required, but curiosity, openness, and a spirit of collaboration are essential.

Grading

  • Weekly Assignments/Screenings/Presentations 20%
  • Filmmaker Journal & Reflection 10%
  • Final Film Proposal 20%
  • Final Film Project 30%
  • Attendance & Participation 20%

Materials

REQUIRED READING NOTES:

Your personalized Course Material list, including digital and physical textbooks, are available through the SFU Bookstore website by simply entering your Computing ID at: shop.sfu.ca/course-materials/my-personalized-course-materials.

Registrar Notes:

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS

At SFU, you are expected to act honestly and responsibly in all your academic work. Cheating, plagiarism, or any other form of academic dishonesty harms your own learning, undermines the efforts of your classmates who pursue their studies honestly, and goes against the core values of the university.

To learn more about the academic disciplinary process and relevant academic supports, visit: 


RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION

Students with a faith background who may need accommodations during the term are encouraged to assess their needs as soon as possible and review the Multifaith religious accommodations website. The page outlines ways they begin working toward an accommodation and ensure solutions can be reached in a timely fashion.