Biography
Bart Testa is a Professor Emeritus at the Cinema Studies Institute. His undergraduate teaching covers a wide range, including courses on popular genres (Fantasy Film, Science Fiction Film, Cinema Sensation I: Action and Spectacle, Cinema Sensation II: Sex) as well as the First Year Foundation course, Story Worlds and the Cinema, and an advanced full-year course in Film Genres and Narration. He also teaches a year-long examination of avant-garde film, a half-course on Canadian avant-garde cinema as well as a full course on Chinese cinemas. Testa also offers 400-level seminars on urbanism and film and narrative endings and apocalyptic theory film. Testa also teaches director studies at both the 200 and 300 levels. He taught his course on Chinese Cinemas through the Summer Abroad Program from 2002 until its cancellation due to COVID-19 in 2020.
Testa has organized several conferences and film festivals with the Asian Institute (Munk Centre, UofT) and worked with both the Reel Asian film festival and, most recently, the Mulan film festival. He has published journal articles and anthologized essays on diverse film topics, though most often on avant-garde film and selected Canadian filmmakers. His most recent essay, “Signs of the Three,” appears in Process Cinema: Handmade Films in the Digital Age (2019).
Publications
- Pier Paolo Pasolini: Contemporary Perspectives (University of Toronto Press : 1994)
- Back and Forth: Early Cinema and the Avant-Garde (Wilfrid Laurier University Press : 1992)
- Spirit in the Landscape (Wilfrid Laurier University Press : 1989)