Variety feature: Top 50 Film Schools and Instructors From Around the World
Variety Entertainment Impact Report: Top 50 Film Schools and Instructors From Around the World
Originally published in Variety on April 16, 2021. By Antonio Ferme, Haley Bosselman, Ethan Shanfeld, Todd Gilchrist
EXCERPT
Each year, Variety curates a list of the top film school programs and film school educators both in the United States and abroad. This year, as the COVID-19 crisis continues unabated, most film and digital arts programs worldwide relied on online models of instruction. But in the midst of this ongoing crisis, centers of higher education continued to nourish ingenuity in the arts. No matter what the challenges the film industry faced, aspiring filmmakers — be they producers, screenwriters or directors — worked diligently at their respective crafts. Students at these schools will likely emerge to become the superstar creators of the TV series, indie films and tentpole movies of tomorrow.
Wendy C. Goldberg, Master Lecturer, Boston University
Inheriting a challenging set of circumstances as a newly appointed master lecturer at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts, Wendy Goldberg says that her previous experience in theater and alternative digital forms underscored the existential similarities between pandemic living and the entertainment industry’s ongoing vagaries. “There is an important desire to keep our work and training relevant to the ever-changing professional landscape so as to provide our students the most varied and useful training geared toward professional opportunity,” Goldberg says. “It is imperative that I prepare students by helping them to tap into their most imaginative ideas and finding ways to work on those as professionals — and to recognize, as storytellers, we have an obligation to speak to our moment in history.”