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Portugal Film School

Summer 2022 courses

Our 2022 summer course will start on the 24th of July and finish on the 7th of August. We will start taking applications from the 1st of March 2022 and if you are selected to participate you will be informed before the end of May.

If you want to apply please use the contact form on this website. State briefly why you want to participate, whether you have any previous experience, where you are from, what your age is, and what your current study or profession is. We will then get back to you.

Prices start from €1095. This includes the full course, the use of all equipment, and camping in a one-person tent on a campsite next to the school. Mattresses and bedclothes are provided. 

Larger tents, either for 2 people with two separate compartments or private, will be more expensive. They have real beds.

The price excludes food and travel expenses.

There is a village café where students can eat at a special rate (7 euros for a full meal). The school also has a basic kitchen.

You will arrive on Sunday afternoon at Funcheira train station near our school, where you will be picked up, and leave on the Sunday two weeks later.

We hope to hear from you!

Your challenge will be to make a 5 minute portrait of a local person (we only select local persons who can speak English as well as Portuguese). Each student will in turn direct, shoot, produce and edit.

Under the guidance of the highly experienced teachers and staff you will work to develop basic competence in using a high-end camera, microphone operation, drone operation, basic lighting principles and how to manage an interview in order to get a reliably good result. You will learn how to acquire and manage good raw material and how that correlates with the editing process as you develop your narrative We will try to tailor our teaching to your individual learning goals as well as providing the overall learning of the things you really need to know in any circumstance.

Classes will usually take place in the mornings, with research field trips, actual shooting and editing in the afternoons. We use professional HD cameras, a drone and Adobe Premiere editing software. A copy of each individual film will be provided to everyone to take home with your name as a director on the credits.

This intensive course takes place in a small village in the countryside of southern Portugal. Classes are taught in the former village school which also houses our technical facilities. The course language is English, but we also speak German, Portuguese, French and Dutch.
Your teachers are experienced filmmakers from the Netherlands, England, Germany and Portugal.

At the end of the course you will receive a certificate. We will also provide a reference when requested by employers or institutions.


Teachers

Ton van der Lee

Ton van der Lee has directed and produced more than 20 feature documentaries and series in Europe, Africa and the US. He has also written and produced TV drama and feature films. His films have been broadcast in many countries and have been shown at a number of international festivals. His feature documentary ‘Rock ‘n Roll Junkie’ about rockstar Herman Brood was voted best postwar biopic by Dutch viewers. He has also published 15 books. 

ton’s website

ton’s wikipedia page

Katinka de Maar

Katinka de Maar has directed a number of feature documentaries for Dutch television. She has won several prizes with her work. Katinka’s series ‘100 Dagen Voor de Klas’ has been broadcast in 2020 and received a nomination for the prestigious Nipkow prize. In 2021 she made a successful 6 part follow up called ‘100 Dagen in je Hoofd’.

katinkademaar.nl

Ian Davidson

Ian has worked in the TV business in the UK for over 20 years. Having worked as a video editor, sound recordist, cameraman, sound post-production engineer among other technical roles in film and television. With a business partner he set up Conscious Life, a subscription based online platform offering courses, live streamed events and documentaries.

Jessy Pérukel 

studied film editing at the Amsterdam Film School in 2019. Ever since, she has worked as a film editor on several projects. Jessy joined the Portugal Film School in 2021 and will be back this year to guide you in your filmmaking and editing process. 

Pedro Almeida 

 is a Portuguese sound and visual creator. He started working as a graphic designer for a national newspaper. His love for experimenting with sounds and images, brought him to multimedia and he has 30 years of experience in many Adobe applications. He has been working for the past decade as a multimedia director and has won several International and Portuguese awards (video, design and events).

pal-digital.org

A professional editor will be available at all times during the course