"In its long history—what is often described as its pre- and posthistory—cinema has always engendered a multiplicity of sites and a multiplicity of images. Cinemas and film simply constituted the dominant iteration in the medium’s classical period. But cinema is no more tied to movie theaters and celluloid than sculpture is bound to temples and marble. In a word, cinema will be multiple or it will not be at all."
Elcott, Noam M (2016): The Phantasmagoric Dispositif: An Assembly of Bodies and Images in Real Time and Space. In: Grey Room 62 (Winter 2016). p. 42-71.
Il faut confronter les idées vagues avec des images claires.
– Jean-Luc Godard in: La Chinoise, F. 1967
Be Sand not Oil – Amos Vogel
Wir irren allesamt, nur jeder irret anderst. – Albrecht von Haller 1772
Cinema has become diverse! New forms of film enable (and require) new narrative techniques. The boundaries of documentary film have become blurred in recent decades; the relationship between images and reality has been called into question long before the market launch of powerful AI tools for image generation. How can I tell a story when it is to be shown simultaneously on multiple screens throughout a space, using both image and sound? How do web-based, non-linear films work? How do I edit a film if it was not shot with a conventional camera, but with a 360-degree camera? How does good cinematic content work in public spaces? And how is artificial intelligence changing filmmaking, storytelling in film and the work involved in making films?
In the Master’s in Film, we focus on traditional documentary formats, but also on strategies and tactics for responding narratively to short attention spans, fragmented reception, new screening situations and cross-platform distribution channels. This involves engaging with interactive formats and technologies of the moving image.
As you work towards your individual Master’s project, you will become familiar with a wide variety of audiovisual narrative formats. Through practical narrative work, you will acquire the flexibility and ability to independently and experimentally develop your own formal language and adapt it to changing contexts. As a successful graduate of the programme, you will be able to confidently navigate the ever-changing job landscape of the future, because you will have learnt to engage critically with your environment and develop independent solutions that cannot be found by automated processes. For this reason, we place the focus of the programme on your personal master’s project. Our programme is based on coaching and critical practice (and theory) to continually challenge you in your own work and thus prepare you as effectively as possible for your future role as an independent filmmaker.
As a student on the Master’s in Film programme, you will also benefit from the proximity to the Animation programme and the expertise available there. Animation is no longer merely a film genre in its own right, but acts as a bridge, connecting film with social media, graphic design, knowledge transfer, and VR/XR, 3D and 360° applications. It also allows complex relationships to be presented quickly and clearly, enabling the creation of worlds that spring from our imagination alone, yet which can also, at times, capture the elusiveness of our everyday reality. This becomes particularly evident at the intersection of documentary film and animation: in conjunction with the MA in Animation, we offer a specialisation in AniDok to explore the common ground between these two film genres. Thanks to this collaboration, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts is one of the few educational institutions internationally where the relationship between images and reality can be explored in practice and tested in film.
