Screen: Michael Heislbetz
English / Deutsch

Directing

This demanding course approaches directing as an art form that creates narrative images of humans acting in the world. We will work with a mixture of theatre and movie directing. The artistic work with actors will be in the centre of our work. We will try out different methods for scene studies based on a meticulous examination of texts from ancient Greek drama to self-written texts. Participants will have the opportunity to put together their own individual artistic toolbox. As a speciality the course includes an introduction to a cybernetic understanding of scenes, the establishment of sensorimotor feedback systems and the application of basic tools such as simple if-then rules. We will anchor the artistic work in the individual confrontation with the world and work on the development of artistic leadership and on individual artistic signature. Project days will focus on tasks like the building of a one-take scene, the filming of a high action sexual scene or the utilization of weather as a narrative compound. The in-class time of the course is 100 hours, the course requires a minimum of 100 additional hours of independent work for project preparation, practical task completion, reading and for the development of small cinematic prototypes. In the spirit of an elastic curriculum, there will be a smaller obligatory reading list and a larger non-obligatory one.

“I have found Anne to be a very open, experimental and encouraging director-teacher, who gets to the heart of what is unclear and unspeakable without any pretentiousness, so much so that she loosens the knot in you. With her lightning-fast understanding of body, space and subtext, she is able to scrape the human, the interesting, the essential out of really everything that is said. And although I was very impressed by her ability to quickly analyse, I don’t feel intimidated by her, but rather encouraged.”
“As a budding film director, I learnt a lot from Anne Frütel, especially in the area of guiding actors. With remarkable subtlety, she manages to develop a deep understanding of characters, their realities and possible courses of action together with the actors. I have found Anne Frütel to be an exceptionally focussed and present teacher, who brings a lot of lightness to the lessons with her informal manner and at the same time has a very clear and structured way of working.”

 /