The Screen Academy at the London Film School
Skillset announces the approval of the London Film School as a Skillset Screen Academy.
Mike Leigh OBE, Director and Chairman (and alumnus) London Film School, said:
"LFS turns 50 in 2006, and it's going to be a very special birthday. On top of the new degrees, some extraordinary filmmaking in the school and new resources, comes this recognition of our great ambitions for LFS and for all film training in the UK. Many happy returns!"
The London Film School (LFS) was founded in 1956 and celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2006. LFS is recognised as one of the world's key graduate conservatoires for film-making and remains film education's most cosmopolitan institution, with LFS graduates established in film and television production in more than eighty countries. Director of the LFS is independent producer Ben Gibson and current chairman is writer/director Mike Leigh, an LFS graduate. Alumni include many great filmmakers and very successful technicians, covering all kinds of cinema - names like Michael Mann, Tak Fujimoto, Roger Pratt, Ueli Steiger, Luis Mandoki, Curtis Clark, Bill Douglas, Franc Roddam, Alain Tanner, Ian Wilson and Anne Hui.
The LFS is situated in Covent Garden, a few hundred yards from Soho, nerve centre of the UK film business. Its mission is to provide an environment for excellent filmmaking, matching issues of craft and technology with the development of creativity and collaboration. LFS offers one intense multi-department filmmaking programme, the 2 year MA Filmmaking, and a unique one-year MA Screenwriting to be launched in September 2005. More new courses are due to be launched in late 2005. Since 2001 LFS has introduced validation from London Metropolitan University for its MA courses.
The MA Filmmaking degree is based on the conviction that students benefit from a professional working base in all technical departments and craft skills, LFS is one of only a handful of schools in the world which features truly industrial level film exercises on 35mm and is structured as a working studio in which every student works on a minimum of one film in every twelve week term and usually more. The school makes around 180 film exercises and graduate films per year and participates in over 100 international festivals.
Ben Gibson, Director London Film School, said:
"Screen Academy recognition, a new network of colleagues and Skillset's funding come together at a crucial time for the London Film School. LFS has been reorganised in the last five years and now wants to build consistently on its achievements over 50 years as an international graduate school, keeping educational methods that really work and updating our high level technical training to keep pace with the industry. One key goal is to ensure good access for the current generation of talented UK graduate students so that they can participate and benefit from the school's special culture and its very full learning programme, as Mike Leigh, and Horace Ove, and Roger Pratt, Don Boyd and Bill Douglas and many other UK filmmakers did before them. Skillset's bursaries make that possible.
"LFS offers multi-department training at graduate level, and so it trains 'filmmakers' whose knowledge will cover a range of film jobs. It's a crucial provision for the UK industry, where we sometimes lose our focus on the energy and imagination required to make a valuable and visible industry out of what the US studios always call 'low-budget' filmmaking. The experience of learning a craft, for the student, doesn't divide education off from training, and neither do we. Skillset has shown pragmatism and flexibility around this combination, responding to the quality and commitment of a diverse group of learning environments who must now cooperate and stay uncompromising, particular, local, national and international, responding to the needs of the industry -- while challenging all its most cherished assumptions. This is a big responsibility which we welcome. The network is good news for LFS and for the UK industry"
Mike Leigh OBE, Director and Chairman (and alumnus) London Film School, said:
"LFS turns 50 in 2006, and it's going to be a very special birthday. On top of the new degrees, some extraordinary filmmaking in the school and new resources, comes this recognition of our great ambitions for LFS and for all film training in the UK. Many happy returns!"
The London Film School (LFS) was founded in 1956 and celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2006. LFS is recognised as one of the world's key graduate conservatoires for film-making and remains film education's most cosmopolitan institution, with LFS graduates established in film and television production in more than eighty countries. Director of the LFS is independent producer Ben Gibson and current chairman is writer/director Mike Leigh, an LFS graduate. Alumni include many great filmmakers and very successful technicians, covering all kinds of cinema - names like Michael Mann, Tak Fujimoto, Roger Pratt, Ueli Steiger, Luis Mandoki, Curtis Clark, Bill Douglas, Franc Roddam, Alain Tanner, Ian Wilson and Anne Hui.
The LFS is situated in Covent Garden, a few hundred yards from Soho, nerve centre of the UK film business. Its mission is to provide an environment for excellent filmmaking, matching issues of craft and technology with the development of creativity and collaboration. LFS offers one intense multi-department filmmaking programme, the 2 year MA Filmmaking, and a unique one-year MA Screenwriting to be launched in September 2005. More new courses are due to be launched in late 2005. Since 2001 LFS has introduced validation from London Metropolitan University for its MA courses.
The MA Filmmaking degree is based on the conviction that students benefit from a professional working base in all technical departments and craft skills, LFS is one of only a handful of schools in the world which features truly industrial level film exercises on 35mm and is structured as a working studio in which every student works on a minimum of one film in every twelve week term and usually more. The school makes around 180 film exercises and graduate films per year and participates in over 100 international festivals.
Ben Gibson, Director London Film School, said:
"Screen Academy recognition, a new network of colleagues and Skillset's funding come together at a crucial time for the London Film School. LFS has been reorganised in the last five years and now wants to build consistently on its achievements over 50 years as an international graduate school, keeping educational methods that really work and updating our high level technical training to keep pace with the industry. One key goal is to ensure good access for the current generation of talented UK graduate students so that they can participate and benefit from the school's special culture and its very full learning programme, as Mike Leigh, and Horace Ove, and Roger Pratt, Don Boyd and Bill Douglas and many other UK filmmakers did before them. Skillset's bursaries make that possible.
"LFS offers multi-department training at graduate level, and so it trains 'filmmakers' whose knowledge will cover a range of film jobs. It's a crucial provision for the UK industry, where we sometimes lose our focus on the energy and imagination required to make a valuable and visible industry out of what the US studios always call 'low-budget' filmmaking. The experience of learning a craft, for the student, doesn't divide education off from training, and neither do we. Skillset has shown pragmatism and flexibility around this combination, responding to the quality and commitment of a diverse group of learning environments who must now cooperate and stay uncompromising, particular, local, national and international, responding to the needs of the industry -- while challenging all its most cherished assumptions. This is a big responsibility which we welcome. The network is good news for LFS and for the UK industry"
