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It is with great pleasure that we welcome students to the academic year 2022-23, the year of “coming of age” for the School of Film, which has now completed its 18th year of operation!
Cinema, although a dominant art form of the 20th century, was absent from Higher Education in Greece until 2004. The establishment of our department within the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki was a bold move that aimed to fill this important gap and to respond to the long-standing demand of the artistic and academic community for a national school that would cultivate and promote the art of cinema, providing applied teaching, conducting theoretical and artistic research and equipping young people with the necessary skills for a creative career in different posts in the film and visual arts industry.
Eighteen years on, the School of Film of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki is serving this mission with dedication, increased experience and acknowledgement from both the academic and professional world in Greece and abroad. Its five-year pluralistic curriculum (integrated master) was recently evaluated as excellent and fully compliant with the principles of the quality standard of the National Authority for Higher Education, while the School was accepted as a full member of the international association of film and television schools CILECT. Graduates and alumni work in various artistic specialties, in positions of responsibility in contemporary audiovisual production, while many of them have won important distinctions in national and international film competitions and some are already recognised as prominent emerging figures of Greek cinema. These results reflect the School’s practice-based pedagogical philosophy applied from the very beginning. Hundreds of film exercises are carried out every year -fiction, documentary and experimental- offering students initially an overview of all artistic areas of audiovisual production and later specialisation in one of eight specialties (script, directing, production management, sound and music, set and costume design, photography, editing, augmented/virtual/mixed reality), or in the field of film and television theory and history. The teaching staff of the School of Film is comprised of artists and film scholars, whose work is widely acclaimed, while the School often has the pleasure of welcoming distinguished filmmakers for masterclasses. At the same time, it is constantly developing new partnerships with various institutions, enhancing teaching and research and providing students with internship opportunities.
During these eighteen years, the School of Film, despite the challenging times, has remained a vibrant space where hundreds of creative people meet and collaborate, an inclusive space of free expression and experimentation, a nursery for new creative voices. On the anniversary of these eighteen years, we celebrate the coexistence of so many different identities and subjectivities that have collaborated and developed their talent under the same roof with one common characteristic, the love of cinema.
The Head of School
Apostolos Karakasis
Associate Professor