Frank Sanna, MFA

As a teacher my primary goal is to help students discover and better understand their 'voice' as a unique and valid perspective in dialogue with the world.

In my personal creative work I explore traditional and hybrid forms of documentary and fiction filmmaking to express feelings and ideas about belonging and identity. I am drawn to the central role of meaning in human endeavour and my research has evolved considering the writing of, amongst others, Gaston Bachelard, Ernesto Grassi, Michael Polanyi, and Elizabeth Sewell, respecting how each maintains the validity of the person in their worldviews. In other practical ways, my academic engagement is informed by an extensive experience in the film and television Art Department, working as Art Director, Graphic Designer, and in various other roles over the years.

At heart, my research-creation is a response to the modern legacy of objectivism and seeks rather to recover the personal and poetic grounds of knowing and being in the world. I strive to speak of the ingenious ways that we search for, discover, and ‘make-up’ the world within an extended kinship of embodied experience. In this way, I try to emphasise a deeply emotional truth about what is real in our evolving need for structure, orientation, and connection.

Education

BA,Graphic Design, Sheridian College / MFA, Studio Arts: Film Production, Concordia University

Courses

COMS 485 – Moving Images III
COMS 384 – Moving Images II
COMS 284 – Moving Images I
COMS 276 – Sound I
COMS 569 – Graduate Diploma Moving Images

FMPR 239 – Montage I
FMPR 231 – Filmmaking I