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Carlo Ghioni

Associate Professor, Film + Screen Arts

Availability:

Education:

Master of Arts, Cinema Study University, Torino, Italy
MEd, PsychoPedagogy, Université Montréal
MA, Puppets Arts, University of Connecticut

Bio

Carlo Ghioni is an Italian-born cine-maker, animator and educator whose work bridges the cultural spaces between Europe and North America. He has directed and produced award-winning films, documentaries, and animated shorts for CBC, RAI, Arte, France3, Discovery and SKY. His recent work explores stop-motion, marionette theatre and VR storytelling. His projects, funded by the Canada Council, Telefilm, BC Arts Council and the Venice Biennale, reveal a deeply humanist and multidisciplinary approach to visual narrative.

Research Interests

Carlo Ghioni’s research explores the intersection of traditional puppet theatre and contemporary media, with focus on marionette carving, automaton design, and the narrative potential of hand-crafted performance. Blending practice and theory, he investigates how puppetry—through shadow play, stop-motion, and carved wooden figures—functions as both art form and educational or therapeutic tool. His current work examines how VR environments with puppet characters can support mental health awareness and emotional resilience in youth. Collaborating with African cinema and cultural institutions including the Burundi Film Centre, Mathare Youth Sports Association in Nairobi, and Djambars in Senegal, he helps develop accessible, culturally grounded media programs where formal tuition is scarce. Alongside this, he advances his filmmaking practice, developing three features—two stop-motion, one live-action—and a series of puppet shorts, reflecting his commitment to hybrid storytelling and global narrative traditions.

24/25 Courses

Course Name Department Course Code Term
Film + Screen Arts FMSA 210 26/SP

Description

In this course students will be introduced to working effectively with a crew. Students will learn how to function in key crew roles - producing, directing, camera, lighting and grip, assistant directing, art directing, and location sound. Students will learn fundamentals and principles of casting, auditioning, blocking, production management, location management, budgeting, scheduling, organization of motion picture production, set orientation, set safety and protocol, and legal issues and releases. This practice-based course includes a rigorous instructor-led shoot over one weekend, with required prep days. Classes incorporate lectures, demonstrations, screenings, exercises, class discussions and hands-on workshops. Students will develop, manage and execute a creative term project, and are expected to collaborate and contribute creatively to peer work.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Film + Screen Arts FMSA 311 26/SP

Description

This Film + Screen Arts media core studio allows for varying degrees of concentration and hybridity in a range of media practices, themes, and genres. This is a dramatic practice course in which individual and collaborative projects enable students to identify appropriate and preferred media practices, and synthesize these approaches using film, digital cinema, audio, online, web-based, interactive stories, and/or immersive, performative modalities. Foundational media skills from previous semesters are the basis for innovative and creative risk-taking that embraces specific cine-making processes and expands and cross-pollinates terrain between genres, industry genres, and the author's approach. Project work is led by the director/author, albeit it is collaborative by nature, developing students' multidisciplinary, team-working, and project management skills. Author-driven scripts and films will be analyzed and broken down, their components examined for purpose and intent. Students implement directing and producing concepts in their own films and class exercises and complete a significant workshop working with their actor(s), from casting and audition through rehearsal and principal photography. Students continue to refine their critical vocabulary and analytical and technical skills. They will have regular critiques and a tight timeline in which the projects must evolve from concept to completion. Students are expected to work on each other's films covering key positions in either pre-production, production, and post-production and ensure that their third-year core studio experiences involve a solo project.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.