Praxis-oriented

Students hit the ground running, shooting documentary projects from week one and then throughout the semester and year on a weekly basis. Each documentary students will shoot around 8 documentary projects per year.

Skills-oriented

Students completing the program are guaranteed to have acquired skills in working with Avid Media Composer editing software, DaVinci color correction, ProTools sound design and After Effects special effects programs. They will know how to operate the Black Magic Pocket, Sony 4K HDCam, Red Epic Dragon and Arri Alexa cameras. They will be proficient in recording with portable mixers, directional, shotgun, omni and wireless microphones, and knowledgeable of how to light using a wide range of lights, from 100 W Dedolights to 4K HMIs.

Knowledge-oriented

The program instructs the history and theory of documentary, involving students in viewing a substantial number of documentary films weekly. Production-based but academically rigorous, Prague Film School programs are approved for university credit by many top tier colleges, including Vassar, Bowdoin, Oberlin, Sarah Lawrence, Bard, Barnard, Northwestern, to name a few.

Creates the Self-Sufficient and Versatile Filmmaker

Students graduating from the course will have the technical skills to fulfill all key positions on a film set and be able to singlehandedly write, produce and edit their own works.

Stories Available

Living in Prague, a city with a tumultuous past (WWII, communism, etc.), students have access to a wealth of local historical, social and cultural subjects.

Size

The Prague Film School Documentary Filmmaking Program offers the additional advantage of being a boutique course – run with a small and selective group of students paired up with top academics and documentary professionals.

Intensive

The type of student who chooses Prague Film School comes to us because he or she has essentially only one year in terms of time or financial resources to cross from where he or she is in life at the moment into the world of professional filmmaking. We then have only one year to bring these students to a level of competence where they can operate professionally. As such the program is highly squeezed.

Students entering the Prague Film School documentary program typically come socially-minded, prepared to tell truth to power and already sensitized to the infinite number of fascinating stories embedded in real life around us.  The documentary program gives its students the skills to tell these stories –structurally, aesthetically and technically.

★ Sample Alumni Career Trajectories

Caitlin Mae Burke (2005) pursued a career producing and directing non-fiction and reality television in the United States after her time at PFS. The feature films she went on to produce (both documentary and scripted) have won Emmy, Grand Clio, and Gotham Awards, and been nominated for Independent Spirit Awards and Cinema Eye Honors, as well as being broadcast and shown theatrically worldwide. She is an inaugural inductee into DOC NYC's 40 Under 40 and a 2018 alumna of Berlinale Talents.

Anne Svejgård Lund (2011) was accepted Britain’s prestigious National Film School largely based on her work at Prague Film School.  She was in the production of The Russian Woodpecker, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2015.  She is currently in production with her own feature documentary Deepali shot in India and produced in Denmark and the UK. In 2020 Anne completed Big Dreams in a Small Place,  a poetic documentary telling the story of young women in a small community dreaming of becoming the majorette and leading the march in the traditional marching band.

Dieter Auner (2006) distributed his first acclaimed documentary feature, Leaving Transylvania, the year following his graduation in 2006. His second feature, Off the Beaten Track, was nominated for Best Documentary at the 2012 IFTA awards. His third feature, Dreams of a Clown, was distributed by EastWest Film Distribution. The skills Dieter picked up in Prague have enabled him to work today as a DP, camera operator and editor on fiction and non fiction films alike.

Omid Marzban (2010) directed the documentary Rebel Beats a few years following graduation at Prague Film School.  The film tells the story of a young female rapper in Afghanistan and was screened at One World Human Rights International Festival. Omid works as a video journalist at Radio Free Europe.