Caucasus school of New Cinema offers Masters programs in two categories: Directing and Screenwriting

Vision

Caucasus School of new cinema has principally chosen to teach “vision” apart from the craft itself. In order to make a chair you first of all have to have an idea of a chair; to make a spear one must have an idea of a spare. To make a film - an idea is necessary. Therefore you cannot teach “film making” prior to having a “vision."

Being a filmmaker does not only mean mastering the craft, it means having a vision as well. Director is the one who sees. Film Director sees the images; he has a special gaze of reality. This “reality" is a material for him, just as clay to a sculptor and a word for a writer. A filmmaker must feel the reality with his fingertips and only then can he make a film from this reality. The program will teach thess particular tactics of cinematography. It will teach to differentiate “lifeless” and “lively” reality. A film director, as a mushroom collector, knows how to tell whether a mushroom is poisoned or healthy. This is an exceptional technique. You have to differentiate a lively image, or location from a lifeless one. If a film scene is developing at a lifeless location, a shot loses its breath – and becomes an ordinary tool of information. The same could be said regarding the lighting, color, sound and all of the components which make basic material for film.

A film has one peculiarity: it does not boil down to an idea, not the plot or the story, nor images or heroes or special effects. Each genuine film is a recreation of life. One cannot “evoke” this life from his own self –but have a real connection with a reality, this is how cinema is. The film captures this reality with its rawness so a whole mastery of a filmmaker lies within capturing this moment on his radar. This does not only imply the realistic film as such, but it speaks about the authenticity, even a face of fantasy must be authentic. Authencity is not created by schemes only; a filmmaker must capture its existence to the core. This needs certain instruments. We have the reality and we must come up with instruments that can capture and recreate them.

There are special techniques, which let us capture the reality. This program first of all will teach these particular techniques, which are more important than basic notions of craft. In reality, these particular techniques are the ones which make a film and there are no universal laws like where should a camera stand, how to expand the scene or how actors should act. There is a technique – how to capture the reality on the radar. And this can be accomplished with camera, scene and acting.

Without the connection to reality the given laws and rules give just an illusion of mastering the profession and this can stop our development. Filmmakers who only own the technical habits do not hold the primary skill – the skill of seeing, because they only make films by fixed rules – their cinema is lifeless.