Prague [Czech Republic]: When we started Prague Film School, I did not want to create an institution where students spent most of their time talking about films they might one day make. Film is ultimately a practical discipline. You can study structure, cinematography, performance and editing in a classroom, but there comes a point when you have to pick up a camera, work with actors and crew, find a location and make decisions when things do not go according to plan.
Prague gave us the environment to build a school around that belief.
There are cities where a film school simply happens to be located, and then there are cities that can become part of the education itself. For us, Prague has always belonged to the latter category. The city has a long filmmaking tradition, professional productions continue to shoot here, and students have access to a remarkably varied environment in which to learn their craft.
That is why Prague was never meant to be just the backdrop to Prague Film School. It was meant to be part of the classroom.
A Film Education Should Involve Making Films
There is an interesting contradiction in film education. Filmmaking is collaborative, practical and unpredictable, yet it can easily be taught as though it were primarily an academic subject.
Theory matters. Film history matters. Understanding why a scene works, how visual language develops and how filmmakers before us approached their craft matters enormously. But none of these things removes the need to actually make films.
A director learns something different when actors and crew are waiting for a decision. A cinematographer begins to understand light differently when working in a real location. An editor discovers rhythm when confronted with footage that may not behave exactly as expected. An actor becomes more conscious of performance when a camera is close enough to capture the smallest expression.
Those are experiences that a lecture alone cannot provide.
This is why production is central to the filmmaking programme at Prague Film School. Students write, direct, shoot and edit four short films of their own within the first three months. At the same time, they work in different crew capacities on their classmates’ projects. By the end of the first semester, each student will have worked across close to 20 productions.
The volume is intentional. The more often students move through the process of developing an idea, preparing it, shooting it and seeing the result, the more opportunities they have to understand their own decisions.
You learn by making something. Then you make something else.
Why Prague Changes the Learning Experience
Prague has more than a century of filmmaking history and continues to attract professional productions from around the world. For students, however, what matters is not simply that films are made here. It is what the city makes available to them as young filmmakers.
Prague Film School is located in the historic centre of the city. Around it are streets, buildings, public spaces and neighbourhoods that give students opportunities to take filmmaking beyond controlled classroom exercises. The school’s production office also assists students with securing locations and permissions, including access to locations such as Czech Railways, Prague Airport, Prague Metro, hospitals, museums and galleries.
That changes the learning process.
Once you begin making films outside a classroom, the questions become immediate. Where should the camera go? What does this location contribute to the scene? What happens when the available light is different from what you expected? How do you stage actors within an existing space rather than a space designed specifically for your story?
These are practical filmmaking questions. Students can discuss them academically, but they understand them differently when they have to solve them themselves.
That is what I mean when I say Prague should be the classroom.
The City Teaches What Equipment Cannot
Film schools understandably talk about equipment. Students want to know what cameras they will use, what editing systems are available and whether they will have access to professional lighting and sound equipment.
Those things matter.
Prague Film School provides students with access to professional filmmaking equipment including ARRI Alexa, ARRI Alexa Mini, RED, Blackmagic and Sony camera systems, along with professional lighting and sound equipment. The school also has Avid Media Composer editing stations, colour-grading facilities, sound post-production suites, a green-screen facility and a Pro Tools-equipped recording booth. Prague Film School is also an ARRI Certified Film School.
But access to technology is only one part of learning filmmaking.
A camera does not decide where it should be placed. It does not decide what belongs inside the frame or what a location should communicate about a character. Those choices still belong to the filmmaker.
One of the things I value about studying in Prague is that students have to keep making those choices. A real city presents possibilities, but it also presents limitations. Students have to observe their surroundings, think about what serves their story and adapt when reality does not match what they originally imagined.
That process develops something equipment alone cannot provide: judgement.
Learning Inside a Working Film City
Another important part of the Prague experience is that students are studying in a city with an established filmmaking infrastructure.
Prague Film School’s production office has developed a network of institutional and private contacts to assist students with locations, actors, costumes, props and other production needs. The school maintains its own database of semi-professional actors and also works with local casting agencies when productions require particular roles.
Students can also draw on connections to established production resources. Prague Film School works with the costume department at Barrandov Film Studios, for example, giving students access to discounted costume and prop services. The school also works with organisations offering film-related products and services to support student productions.
That matters because filmmaking is never only about the person directing the film.
It requires cinematography, performance, editing, sound, production, costume, locations and many other disciplines working together. Our intention has always been to develop not only filmmakers with their own creative ideas, but people capable of working professionally as members of crews and in post-production.
Working repeatedly with other people is therefore as important as making your own film.
Smallness Was a Deliberate Choice
The philosophy of practical filmmaking also influenced another decision we made about Prague Film School: remaining relatively small.
Students arrive from more than 30 countries each year, but the school is deliberately intimate. The purpose of that scale is access: closer relationships with teachers, easier access to facilities and more opportunities to participate in production.
Filmmaking education becomes very different when students are repeatedly working together.
Someone directing one production may work in another crew position on the next. Students encounter the filmmaking process from different perspectives rather than seeing every production only through the role they eventually hope to pursue.
That is valuable because filmmaking is inherently collaborative. Even the strongest individual vision eventually has to be communicated to other people.
Learning how to do that is part of becoming a filmmaker.
An International Classroom Creates Different Conversations
There is another classroom at Prague Film School that has nothing to do with the physical city.
It is the student body itself.
Students from more than 30 countries come to the school annually, while faculty members include Czech and international film professionals. The prevailing character of the school draws on both European art-house and American independent cinema.
Put people from different countries on the same film crew and they will not necessarily interpret every story in the same way.
I think that is useful.
A filmmaker may have to explain why a character should behave in a particular way, why a moment is supposed to be funny or uncomfortable, or why an image carries a certain meaning. Assumptions that might go unquestioned among people from the same background can suddenly become part of the creative conversation.
For students coming from India, that means entering an English-language classroom alongside filmmakers from many different countries and encountering perspectives shaped by European, American and other international filmmaking traditions. English is the language of instruction at Prague Film School, so students work together through a shared language while bringing very different creative references into their productions.
The objective is not to make everyone tell stories in the same way. It is to expose students to enough different approaches that they begin thinking more deliberately about their own.
Film School Should Be a Place to Experiment
Young filmmakers can sometimes feel that every project has to prove what they are capable of.
I believe film school should offer room for something else: experimentation.
When students are regularly producing work, every project does not have to carry the weight of being the single film that defines them. They can try a different approach to directing, experiment with cinematography, discover whether an idea works on screen and learn from the result.
Some decisions will work. Others will not.
Both outcomes can be educational.
The purpose of practical film training should not be to pretend that mistakes can be eliminated. Professional filmmaking itself involves uncertainty and constant problem-solving. The more useful objective is to help students become better at recognising problems, making decisions and understanding the consequences of those decisions.
A city like Prague gives them many opportunities to practise that.
Eventually, the Classroom Becomes Much Bigger
At the beginning of a film education, students need foundations. They need technical instruction, demonstrations, vocabulary, theory and guidance.
Then something starts to change.
A directing lesson becomes a shoot. A cinematography exercise becomes a decision about how a story should look. An editing class becomes a discussion about whether a scene actually works. A location that students have passed many times becomes the setting for a film. Classmates become collaborators and crew members.
The classroom has not disappeared. It has simply become much larger.
That was the possibility I saw in Prague and the philosophy that has continued to shape Prague Film School.
Prague is certainly visually remarkable, and filmmakers have long recognised that quality. But for a student, beauty alone is not enough. What matters is having the opportunity to engage with the city, work within it and learn how to translate a place into a story.
Students have to observe locations, make choices, collaborate with people, work with the conditions they find and turn ideas written on a page into images and sound.
Eventually, they begin looking at the city differently.
And when that happens, Prague is no longer simply the place where they came to study film.
It has become part of how they learned to make one.
