Read about the experiences of the investigators of the internal grants to support quality teaching.
The project "Excellent Study Program in Film Theory and History and Audiovisual Culture NMGr" at Masaryk University successfully prepares students for practical application in the domestic audiovisual field, primarily thanks to an internship program and cooperation with leading filmmakers and institutions.
When we looked at the professional careers of graduates of the master's program in Film and Audiovisual Culture Theory and History, we found that despite their research projects being rooted in historical or analytical perspectives, they most often find employment in practical fields. Many of them work in dramaturgical or production positions at Czech Television, in production or distribution companies, or at film festivals. In 2023, we designed the project "Excellent Study Program in Film and Audiovisual Culture Theory and History NMGr" to better prepare students and graduates for practical work in the domestic audiovisual industry and increase their chances in this specific job market.
The greatest successes in this regard were achieved by the internship program, which enabled students to compete for paid positions in film crews, in the dramaturgy of film festivals, or to assist with the promotion of prestigious co-production projects. We have managed to establish a more permanent collaboration with the production company Bratři s.r.o., which is behind films such as Kdyby radši hořelo (2023, dir. Adam Koloman Rybanský) and Přišla v noci (2023, dir. Tomáš Pavlíček, Jan Vejnar), as well as with the Czech division of the streaming company Canal+. For the second year in a row, we have an intern working directly in the programming department of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. "An internship in the MFFKV programming department is a unique opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look at the largest film festival in the Czech Republic and the most prestigious festival of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe. I find it most beneficial to be able to observe how the final form of the festival program comes together—from coordinating festival guests for individual films, to communicating with film rights holders, to the impact of current world political events on programming," says this year's intern, Václav Hořeňovský.
Our efforts to link historical and theoretical teaching with practice also guided us in selecting foreign guests. We probably succeeded most notably in fulfilling this ambition with the course "Filmmaking in the Virtual Age: training, trends, and perspectives," led by two experienced teachers from the London Film School. During an intensive week in the fall semester of 2023, both guests introduced students to the current challenges facing traditional filmmaking and its teaching as a result of the proliferation of digital tools across the entire creative process. The students then tried their hand at filming a few scenes in several teams using a simple mobile phone app, experiencing the communication and organizational problems that crews commonly face. "This course gave me an invaluable opportunity to experience all the practical aspects of film production firsthand, at least for a while. Although the short shoot itself may have seemed awkward and I didn't feel good about it, I realized the pressure that people in professional crews work under, given the economic and artistic expectations that various participants place on individual projects," read one of the seminar papers related to this course. Thanks to our collaboration with the Center for Information Technology, we created excellent instructional videos during this course, which we continue to use for lessons introducing ethnographic research and production studios.
The Excellence project culminated for us in the fall of 2024, when we invited domestic guests (including an Austrian producer) to Brno for a series of thematic lectures introducing students to the production of international co-production films and series as well as domestic documentary films; as well as data-driven cinema programming and film festivals, both from the perspective of the programmers themselves and from the perspective of the creators who submit their works to these festivals. In some cases, these were graduates of the Theory and History of Film and Audiovisual Culture program who have become important players in the field of domestic audiovisual media—for example, Mgr. Dan Krátký, chairman of the Association of Cinema Operators, and Bc. Jan Bodnár, producer of award-winning documentaries such as Jiříkovo vidění (2023, dir. Marta Kovářová). These lecturers had a motivating effect on the students: after all, they had graduated from the same field of study as the students themselves and were not only successful in institutions typically associated with the field, such as the National Film Archive and the State Audiovisual Fund, but also in developing, creating, and obtaining funding for award-winning films and bringing them to audiences. "Another opportunity to get out of the bubble of our department," was one of the comments in the course survey, in which students particularly praised the clear presentation of the practical functioning of the domestic audiovisual environment.
We used part of the funds to support master's research projects that are demanding in terms of implementation and require more thorough archival research or ethnographically oriented research plans that require, for example, direct participation in classes at FAMU or in filming. The ongoing outputs from these supported projects are of a high professional standard, and once these texts are completed in the fall of 2025, they are expected to be published in domestic or international peer-reviewed journals. We also introduced students to the basics of audiovisual education, which is by no means limited to strictly pedagogical purposes, but can also be used to organize film screenings, distribute more demanding titles, and work creatively with a wide variety of screening venues.
During the project, some aspects of the film's life cycle received less attention than we had intended – this applies mainly to distribution and film promotion. However, the results exceeded our expectations in many ways: students gain invaluable experience from their internships and obtain further opportunities. Their own research increasingly reflects contemporary audiovisual media, and historically rooted projects are turning to research into individual crew positions or the everyday life of filmmakers, about which we still know very little. In view of the constantly developing and mutually enriching communication with Czech creators and producers of audiovisual content, we are preparing a bachelor's specialization for the fall semester of 2026 called "Practical Audiovisual Studies," which will naturally build on all the knowledge and ideas we have gained through the Excellence project.
Author: Mgr. Šárka Jelínek Gmiterková, Ph.D. – Faculty of Arts, Department of Film and Audiovisual Culture
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