One of the nation's premier training grounds for filmmakers isn't a film school, and it doesn't have ties to Hollywood.

But it is a hatchery for unconventional approaches to independent film with a track record of prestigious awards

Students who specialize in film through the UCSD Department of Visual Arts Master of Fine Arts program have been near the forefront of the indie film world for over a decade. "Our students have gained a reputation for being very strong conceptually and also very proficient technically," says M.F.A. program coordinator B.J. Barclay.

Six M.F.A. filmmakers have won Princess Grace Foundation awards, including Sara Takahashi, a 3rd-year student whose documentary work about tourism in her native Hawaii has been shown in major festivals. Film alumni Rebecca Baron, '01, and Rolf Belgum, '92, exhibited films in the 2000 Whitney Biennial, and Jennifer Reeves, '03, won an Honorable Mention in Short Filmmaking at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival.

Like Takahashi, 3rd-year student Tara Knight came to UCSD from Hampshire College in Massachusetts to pursue filmmaking as an unfettered art medium. "Most graduate film departments follow rigid sets of procedures about how one can make a film," says Knight, "but that doesn't happen here. In our department, filmmakers work alongside sculptors, painters and installation artists, which produces a cross-fertilization of ideas."

M.F.A. filmmakers also collaborate across disciplines. Knight's project is guided by Visual Arts film scholars Jean-Pierre Gorin and Babette Mangolte and also by two faculty members outside her area: Judith Dolan, a Tony Award-winning costume designer from Theatre & Dance, and sculptor Jennifer Pastor of Visual Arts.

Knight's M.F.A. project is a new adaptation of Philip K. Dick's story "Second Variety," a futuristic tale about humans and robots. In true indie fashion, Knight is steering a classic sci-fi plot into unorthodox realms. "My project focuses on how technology is changing the way we tell stories visually," she says, "and it's set in a world where these same changes challenge our definition of what it means to be human."

For help with technological effects, Knight consults with Stephan Steinbach, an undergraduate at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering. "I have a team of people from all over the place, including two student actors from Theatre and two Marines from Camp Pendleton who are playing Marines," she says.

Knight plans to enter her finished work in film festivals, but she doesn't intend to shop it around Hollywood. "My M.F.A. will give me the freedom to pursue my own projects, and perhaps to teach," Knight says. "So I won't have to rely on making a film the way a studio is paying me to do it."