Phone +972 2-673-1950 Founded 1989 | Founder Renen Schorr | |
Address יד חרוצים 4, Jerusalem, 9110501, Israel Similar בית ספר לקולנוע מעלה, בצלאל, Jerusalem Cinemath, בית הספר לאמנות מוסררה ‑ ע, Jerusalem Academy of Music Profiles | ||
The Sam Spiegel Film and Television School is a film school in Jerusalem, Israel. It was founded in 1989 by the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture and the Jerusalem Foundation, Israel’s first independent, national school for film and television. At a special ceremony at MOMA In 1996, it was renamed in honor of the Academy Award-winning American Jewish producer Sam Spiegel, with the generous support of the Sam Spiegel Estate.
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The school has been the subject of some 190 tributes and retrospectives in 55 countries at international festivals, including key events such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1996), the Rotterdam Festival (1997), the Havana Festival (1999), the Moscow Festival (1999), the Valladolid Film Festival (Spain, 2000), FIPA Festival - Biarritz (France, 2004) the Berlin International Film Festival (2004), the Hamptons Festival (2005) and the Clermont-Ferrand Festival in France (2005), and Sarajevo Film Festival (2008). In 2016 the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge University held a tribute to the school. The School has been the subject of an unprecedented number of tributes and retrospectives. The school's films have won 420 international and local prizes, including twice the First Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2008 Anthem, by Elad Keidan was awarded First Prize in the Student Film competition at the prestigious "Cinefondation" section. This marked the first ever such win by an Israeli student film in Cannes, and in 2015 Or Sinai won for her film Anna.
According to the school’s own data, 76% of its graduates work in the industry. Among the school’s most prominent alumni are Rama Burshtein, Nadav Lapid, Talya Lavie, Tom Shoval, Nir Bergman, Noah Stollman, Elad Keidan and Ra'anan Alexandrowicz.
The former director of the New York Film Festival, Richard Pena, said in 2011 at the tribute to the school at Columbia University: “Israeli cinema can be divided into two periods—before and after the establishment of the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School.”
History
In 1988, a student protest took place at the film department of the Beit Zvi School of Art in Ramat Gan, then the sole film school supported by the state. Charging that Beit Zvi gave preference to the acting track, the film students demanded independence. The Education and Culture Minister at the time, President Yitzhak Navon established a public inquiry that supported their claims. He then decided to create a new independent, well-funded school for film and television, the first of its kind in Israel.
The mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, and Ruth Cheshin, president of the Jerusalem Foundation, saw a window of opportunity to “bring the ocean to Jerusalem”, in their words. They committed to match government funding. In July 1989, Ruth Cheshin charged film director Renen Schorr with the task of making this new school a reality in four months’ time – and the school indeed opened in Jerusalem in November 1989.
Unlike other existing films schools in Israel (like the film department of Tel Aviv University and the Beit Zvi school) the Sam Spiegel School was a crusader in the attempt to classify the short film as a genre, identifying itself as a “story-telling school” and placed central importance on the protagonist in the story and the narrative. Similarly, the school stressed the focus of “audiencing” work, paraphrasing the words of Hitchcock: “The task of a film director is not just to work with the screenwriter, the actors, the cinematographer, the editor and the composer, but to direct the audience.”
In 1992-3, the school went public for the first time. The Israeli film community and the media were surprised by the storytelling style of the school’s films. In the Israel Film Institute Competition for Short Films, the school’s films took 12 out of 13 awards.
As a direct result, works of the school’s graduates were broadcast on Channel 2, which began its transmission in late 1992, and the school built a strategic partnership with one of its franchises, TelAd. Every year, from 1993 until its license period ended in 2005, TelAd broadcast nationally all of the graduate films in a specially designed series, "Shorts at Midnight".
In November 1996, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City presented the school’s first major retrospective. At the opening night ceremony, which was attended by Teddy Kollek, the Spiegel family, graduates of the school, film producers and members of the New York film industry, the school’s name was officially changed to the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, Jerusalem.
Speaking at the event, MOMA Chief Curator Larry Kardish said of the school’s films, “Although each is substantially different from the other, they all seem to share some significant and impressive characteristics. Whether fiction or documentary, narrative or experimental, they are all fresh, quirky, surprising and pithy. That they were well-made is to be expected, but that they also appeared to be effortlessly realized, naturally based in social realities, and psychologically sophisticated is out of the ordinary... The Sam Spiegel School is sending Israeli cinema in a new and exciting direction; its spirit is crossing borders, and its films are a most welcome presence invigorating the international scene. ”
Educational tracks
The school works on a triangular model. Located in the Talpiot industrial zone in Jerusalem, the school has a student body of 160 and offers three tracks: the Full Track – Training students in directing, screenwriting, cinematography, editing and production.
In 1999, the school began a two-year track for screenwriters, with the aim of creating a model for cooperation between screenwriters and directors, and with a specialization in writing for television.
In 2004, the school inaugurated a four year track for entrepreneur producers, the first of its kind in Israel.
Each of the three tracks operates autonomously. The school trains its students to reach a synergy of the tracks, leading to future cooperation beyond the school framework, based on it guiding principles and spirit.
Milestones
After being well established, the school has over the years worked to promote its students and graduates – and by extension Israeli film and international film in general.
Anniversaries
In late 2017 the school will be issuing a special release of “The 100” - a 4 DVD collection of the 25 Best Shorts ever of the school selected by a jury of 50 leading film critics and 50 leading directors of film schools from around the world.