Department of Film and Television Directing
Since the very foundation of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, film has been recognized as an inevitable part of drama creativity, while the education of film artists lasts for 70 uninterrupted years, even though the Film and Television Directing Department was formally founded in school year 1967/68. With accelerated development of technologies in recent decades, film has become widely available to all but the need for film creators with university education is even higher than in the past. All the questions that Francois Truffaut had to answer to his associates in the beginning of his film Day for Night remained the same. Today, when everyone makes films on a personal mobile phone on a daily basis, the responsibility of a film director and artists is more important than ever.
Therefore, we preserved the principles the teachers observed from the beginning of studies of first generations of students. The first step in education of a film director has to be mastering the directing ‘craft’. Only after the students develop their own individual creative author personalities. Continuous modernization of classes has lasted since the beginning of 70’s in the last century up to now with the use of best experiences from national and international cinematography. Over the past decades of Department’s work, the study program of film directing has been fully profiled. It observed the development and needs of Serbian cinematography but also the series of technologically conditioned changes the alternated in the film industry. We define the aim of the study program at this Department as acquiring basic knowledge on directing ‘craft’, directing short feature and non-feature forms, TV forms, documentary film, introduction to and adopting basic terminology and technology, transfer of artistic and professional knowledge and skills, education of artists-directors in order to develop and improve artistic directing while working on audiovisual media.
Film directing classes at the Faculty follow the achievements of the most successful schools in Western and Eastern Europe. The Faculty works devotedly on exchanging experiences with them. This process takes place through a large number of practical classes. The number of practical classes increases with every year. We devote special attention to joint practical classes with other departments where students form their own first teams and creative acquaintances and friendships which will follow them throughout their entire professional career. Year after year, practical classes have become more numerous and complex, while the Faculty is turning into the largest producer of short feature and documentary films, not only in Serbia, but also in the entire wider region.
The students’ films are awarded by significant prizes on dozens of national and international festivals. This way, our department is leaving a huge mark in the film arts. It takes only an overview of film and television directing alumni in the last decades to realize that the history of Film and Television Directing Department is practically a history of Serbian cinematography. In the years to come, our obligation is to keep the high artistic criteria and preserve the reputation of the Film and Television Directing Department by promoting new successful generations of Serbian directors in the 21st century, while at the same time continuously working on modernization of classes imposed by new technologies.