Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema

Rafael Lino Current Student, 27-Jan-2010
Although immediately warned by former students not to set foot inside, I attended the first year was eager to learn Cinema, and with expectations to simply take some time with it before going to another, better school. You get the impression after a while that most of the teachers simply don't know what they're doing class-wise, and information about anything of use is hard to get out of them (when it exists), even though the vast majority of them have some experience in Cinema, some of it good work. A common problem is lack of interdepartamental communication, where for instance, you are forced as a screenwriter to write for a director who gets directions by his teacher to change his script, while your screenwriting teacher tells you not to or to do something completely different (undermining the director's chances). The teachers have very strict creative values, which are conundrums you have to figure out all by yourself, in order to get good grades. Like bad parents, they refuse to tell you what they want if you ask them directly (or discuss it like healthy human beings), but if you don't do it, get ready for a spanking. The biggest monstrosity present however, must be the pitching system. Effectively the school no longer has funding to produce movies for every group of students so an elimination system has been set up where the teachers choose the movies which will be produced by the school from groups of three (which they illogically and arbitrarly set at one producer, one director and one screenwriter, without the option to inflate the group in any way other than by eliminating other people and making them beg to join you). This a horrible, unfair competitive system where everybody just ends up hating everybody and refusing to work with this person or the next. Eventually, by the second year most people realize that the system that's been imposed is at fault and begin to detest the teachers, who, with a few exceptions, do not inform you of the failings of your pitch, a way in fact, to attempt to conceal the fact that they pick favorites unilaterally. In my year for instance, pretty much everyone wrote a script except the two groups who did pass the pitching (out of 10) because they were too busy pleasing every single teacher who gave them any feedback. You are effectively punished for having a voice or a will, and although the groups that do pass attempt to create something of their own, in order to pass your spine is so far removed that you've pretty much been neutered. The results have been a lousy decade of decline for this school. To boot you have aging equipment and an installation far outside of lisbon which is crumbling over building flaws. I've been told that restart and lusofona are far more acceptable in every regard, and under no circumstances would I recommend you coming to this school.