Direct­ing

Today, film­mak­ing is part of every­day life. This banal­i­sa­tion of audio­vi­su­al lan­guage has cre­at­ed a state of fragili­ty and flux for the medi­ums of cin­e­ma and tele­vi­sion.

In the face of this banal­i­sa­tion, an aca­d­e­m­ic edu­ca­tion in film direct­ing is more impor­tant than ever, as it allows young film­mak­ers to ful­ly delve into the cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage and its pos­si­bil­i­ties.

What is film direct­ing? The abil­i­ty “to tame the world accord­ing to a person’s par­tic­u­lar pas­sion”, as Frie­da Grafe once wrote. It is there­fore an activ­i­ty, which is both alive and expe­ri­en­tial, and that engages the Oth­er. In this sense, film direct­ing ulti­mate­ly means: direct­ing the viewer’s gaze. Not in the sense of direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion – a film is not a mes­sage – but rather as an invi­ta­tion to greater thought and feel­ing. Thus, the film­mak­ing expe­ri­ence is only com­plete when the film is expe­ri­enced by the view­er.

To suc­cess­ful­ly direct films, there are many tal­ents required that can­not be learned. But cer­tain aspects of direct­ing can be learned, for exam­ple, tech­niques that have his­tor­i­cal­ly been proven to be use­ful, and craft: in the areas of sto­ry devel­op­ment, work­ing with actors, the lan­guage of visu­al sto­ry­telling, edit­ing, etc. Direct­ing stu­dents are invit­ed to under­stand film his­to­ry as an anar­chist world of bro­ken rules not gov­erned by aca­d­e­m­ic thought, and there­fore a real trea­sure trove for ideas ready to be ‘stolen’ by the young curi­ous film­mak­er.

The DFFB encour­ages each direct­ing stu­dent to devel­op an exper­i­men­tal film­mak­ing prac­tice and to engage in an intel­lec­tu­al reflec­tion of film the­o­ry. Sim­ply put: stu­dents should think about what they wish to express and then ful­ly exper­i­ment in the cre­ation process. At all times, they should remain con­nect­ed to the core ques­tions of film­mak­ing: Why tell this sto­ry? How should this sto­ry be told? What is the mean­ing of this par­tic­u­lar sto­ry?

The DFFB aims to teach, in an account­able and trans­par­ent man­ner, approach­es to film direct­ing that allow  stu­dents to devel­op their own per­son­al under­stand­ing of cin­e­ma. Lec­tur­ers at the DFFB teach many cin­e­mat­ic meth­ods and approach­es, rang­ing from exper­i­men­tal to more-estab­lished forms of sto­ry­telling. The goal is for stu­dents to dis­cov­er their own indi­vid­ual artis­tic voice and to under­stand its place and role in mod­ern soci­ety.

In the first and sec­ond aca­d­e­m­ic years, all cours­es and sem­i­nars are arranged around prac­ti­cal film exer­cis­es. Through inten­sive­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing togeth­er on tasks and work­ing in var­i­ous capac­i­ties on set, stu­dents devel­op a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the medi­um of film, as well as of each spe­cial­i­sa­tion with­in the film­mak­ing process and its con­tri­bu­tion to the whole. The pri­or­i­ty is on cre­at­ing a film­mak­er who is ver­sa­tile and whose cre­ative focus will grow through this acquired broad-rang­ing knowl­edge of film­mak­ing. In the third and fourth aca­d­e­m­ic years, these skills will be giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ful­ly devel­op through work­ing on larg­er projects.

Christoph Hochhäusler