Type Public Dean Zdeněk Holý Phone +420 234 244 301 | Established 1946/47 Location Prague, Czech Republic Founded 1946 | |
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Address Smetanovo nábř. 1012/2, 110 00 Praha 1-Staré Město, Czechia Similar Faculty of Theatre, Academy of Performin, Academy of Arts, Filozofická fakulta Univerzity, Academy of Fine Arts Profiles | ||
The Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (Czech: Filmová a televizní fakulta Akademie múzických umění v Praze) or FAMU is one of the oldest film schools in the world. Located in Prague, Czech Republic, FAMU was founded in 1946 as one of three branches of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. The teaching language at most of programs at FAMU is Czech, but FAMU offers also programs in English: summer workshops, one-year Academy Program, Special Productions - or MFA program Cinema in Digital Media. According to The Hollywood Reporter weekly, FAMU is the best film school in Europe and No. 11 in the world.
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FAMU’s main building is situated in an attractive location in the historic centre of Prague. The school includes Studio FAMU, a production and postproduction facility with fully equipped sound stages and TV studios and continuously innovated technology for realising student works. Each autumn, FAMU organises the Famufest festival, a showcase of its students’ current work as well as an accompanying cultural programme and visits by prominent figures in filmmaking.
In the 1960s and 1970s, several young directors from Yugoslavia were FAMU students (Rajko Grlić, Srđan Karanović, Emir Kusturica, Goran Marković, Goran Paskaljević and Lordan Zafranović). All of these directors would become very successful in the following decades, prompting the coinage of the term Praška filmska škola ("Prague film school"), or Praški talas ("Prague wave"), which is sometimes considered a prominent subgenre of the Yugoslav cinema.
Studies
At present, FAMU is composed of eleven departments which systematically prepare its students to perform all the professions of film and audio-visual production. These are the departments of Directing, Documentary filmmaking, Scriptwriting and Dramaturgy, Animated Film, Cinematography, Sound Design, Editing, Production, Photography, and the FAMU Center for and intermedia disciplines, focusing primarily on theoretical research. Studies are offered at the Bachelor’s, Master’s and doctoral levels. Additionally, FAMU International department offers a three- year Master’s programme in Cinema and Digital Media with instruction in English for foreign students focusing mainly on authorial scriptwriting and directing work. The individual departments are gradually expanding their programmes to include instruction in English, which is currently offered in the full extent by the departments of Photography and Cinematography. FAMU also offers foreign students the one-year Academy Preparation Program, which uses an intensive methodology to provide theoretical as well as practical film instruction; the three-month Special Production Course, which focuses on the practical issues of the production and distribution of an audio-visual work.
International affiliations
The faculty is a founding member of the CILECT network and also of ELIA – European League of Institutes of the Arts. FAMU offers a wide range of short-term courses organised in cooperation with organisations such as the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE), CET Academic Programs and schools including New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Emerson College, Columbia, Yale and CalArts.