I begun by interviewing artists and entrepreneurs, looking for people with ideas — someone with a story to tell. It took time and I kept asking questions. Kept meeting people, looking straight at them, looking for that spark in their eyes, that wild excitement, someone burning to do something.

The one desire that emerged was to somehow put Sao Tomé e Principe on the world map for everyone to see

Coming from a tiny country myself I can empathize. In Estonia we’re just over 1 million and I’ve felt what’s it like to want to get to the big city. I always wanted to get my work out there to the world where it’s happening as well.

So an idea was born. To create a sort of a Global Voices for artists. An online magazine that would highlight awesome things created in places that remain under the radar of global media. Films, paintings, sculptures, and all sorts of creative projects.

We would publish stories with interesting people who are trying to make something happen, create value where there was nothing but people and an idea. We would do that all over the world, using a network of young people communicating over the Internet with Skype, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Just as Global Voices, the site would function as a resource for larger media to pick up stories. But instead of politics, the focus would be on the arts.

We’re in the very beginning, because this is nothing more than an idea in my head. Know someone you think would love working on this? Drop me a line.

Trailer for my upcoming documentary, Tomé that inspired the idea. (Hint: go to the official website to see the subtitles.)

I first saw it at the Fitas na Rua in Lisbon, a brilliant series of cinema events that every Saturday and Sunday in August makes one public place in the city (garden, square, park, whatever) a cinema theater. I though it was a fantastic film and it was made by a director I had never heard of. Flora Gomes.

The film was Flora Gomes’ Udju Azul Di Yonta and it became one of the influences for my documentary.

Before making Tomé, I was looking for Lusoafrican films to get into the mood; As African cinemas go, Guinea-Bissau is not well researched and there’s not that much about written about its history in film. So it seemed interesting.

According to IMDB 9 films were made in Guinea-Bissau out of which I’ve seen 5.

Flora Gomes. Gomes hails from Guinea-Bissau but lives in Europe (Lisbon and Paris) and is the country’s most influential (and perhaps the only active) film director.

1995 - A Mascara (Haven’t seen.)

1988 - Mortu Nega, also viewable in the African Film Library. (Seen.)

1996 - Po di Sangui (aka L’arbre aux âmes or Pau de Sangue or Tree of  Blood). Viewable in the African Film Library. Review on New York Times. (Seen.)

1992 - Udju Azul di Yonta (aka Les yeux bleu de Yonta, Os olhos Azuis de Yonta, The Blue Eyes of Yonta). Viewable on African Film Library and MUBI. (Seen.) Synopsis: The daily life of a series of characters in a country, Guinea Bissau, rebuilding after long years of war. The focus is mainly on the beautiful and irreverent Yonta, a girl of the new generation.

[2002 - Nha Fala. in parenthesis, because even though this is a film by Flora Gomes, it was filmed in Cape Verde and Paris, as Guinea-Bissau at the time (2001) was in political turmoil. (Seen.)]

Woyingi gives a good overview of Flora Gomes’ early years, and the influences of Ousmane Sembene, Santiago Álvarez, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, and Chris Marker on the development of his career as a film director. Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike interviews Gomes in his excellent book Questioning African Cinema: Conversations With Filmmakers.

Others

1. Fanado by unknown (1984). (Haven’t seen.)
2. N’tturudu byUmban U’kset. (Haven’t seen.)
3. N’tturudu by Umban U’kset (aka The Mask) (1986) (Haven’t seen.)
4. Xime by Sana Na N’Hada (1994) 6.2/10 (6 votes) (Haven’t seen.)
5. Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983) was also partly filmed in Guinea-Bissau. (Seen.}

From my experience with Tomé:

Film editing on PC is a pain, because you’ll be doing it alone.

If you want to collaborate with someone, you’ll fast find yourself stuck. I’ve been a PC-user since I was 3 years old so Premiere was what I had installed. I’d started editing on Premiere, happily back from shooting with 35+ hours of material to cut for Tomé,

But here in Tallinn, Estonia, I soon  discovered myself on a deserted island with no other PC-using editors with Premiere to be found anywhere. I asked 25 people I knew, asked Facebook, contacted every editor I could find in Estonia that had a listing on IMDB Pro. But seemingly none of the editors in town were using Adobe Premiere. At least none of the editors I was able to contact. They were using Apple’s Final Cut instead. So unless I wanted to edit alone, and wanted to collaborate with an editor – and first of all, transfer my footage. I’d better get a Mac.

So is this global? How many users does Premiere have vs. Final Cut? I mean even on Adobe’s promo showcase of Premiere CS5.5. you’ll see the indie filmmaker Gareth Edwards working all alone.

Ok, so maybe I can continue working on my PC while my editor works on a Mac?

No. Interchangeability doesn’t work that well. On international projects where HDs need to be shipped across borders and continents, small mistakes like this can cost weeks to fix in post-production time. Reviewing the work of your editor (who’s obviously will be working on Final Cut) means that you’ll have to learn to use a Mac anyway.

I recently graduated from film school with a Bachelor of Arts in Audiovisual Media at Tallinn University Baltic Film and Media School.

I want to look back at my experience at film school.

But also look forward towards my academic and artistic aspirations. Perhaps it’s helpful for other students and prospective filmmakers.

I was 20 when entering college. In Estonia university scholarships are state-sponsored, paying 100% of your tuition fee but no living costs. Tallinn University offered me 2 scholarship. My choices were BA in Anthropology, a course open for the first year at the newly opened wing of the university, spearheaded by an Argentine professor Lorenzo Cañás Bottos. And BA in Audiovisual media at the Baltic Film and Media School, taught in English (opened in 2006, the year before) and led by the Estonian filmmaker and media executive Hagi Šein.

My connection to anthropology had been studying one semester at the Salta National University in Argentina as a YFU exchange student; while I was technically in high school, I was allowed to attend classes as I showed lots of enthusiasm to the subject, and loved studying the local indigenous cultures and languages. But back here in Estonia I was not really that enthusiastic about studying Estonians..

My connection to film had been writing and taking lots of photographs. Since I was a kid I’d written short stories and people had always complimented me on my writing and my photographs. My understanding was that this was exactly filmmaking was about – writing with images. So I chose film.

While I completed a number of projects in school, now after a three-year course, I feel pretty much back to square one. I don’t know what I want yet.

Master’s Choices

Werner Herzog, an influential german director has spoken out against film schools. And so have other notable people in film, saying that what you really need isn’t school but life experience, and experience on the set.

There’s even a movement called NoFilmSchool, that aims to give you all the resources you need to make a film without an actual school; plus great pools of free information on forums, Quora, and many blogs to name only a few. Also, if you’re getting an MFA not out of interest in self-development, taste for culture, and passion for the arts, but to get a job - an art degree is probably not going to be much of help.

But as Erika Dreifus has said, figuring out one’s own goals, strengths, and weaknesses is something to do before applying anyway, and one should try to find a match between one’s individual experience and ambitions with a given program and its offerings.

“what seems wonderful (or terrible) to one person is likely to look very different to someone else (again) depending on the past academic, professional, and personal experiences each person brings to the table and what his or her goals or expectations may be.”

I feel most at home in the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries (and speak the languages). So on a gut level, the best place to continue for me would probably be Brazil. But to make an informed choice and also out of plain curiosity, I’m researching all the programs out there to see what’s actually available.

Education is expensive and I’m pretty much unable to pay even low tuition fees and thus need a full scholarship. This is most difficult for an international student to attain in the US, and perhaps easiest right here in Europe. I’m listing the application fees (it’s actually expensive to send in your application) and approximate tuition fees per year (where available, and rounded off to the closest hundred).

My Preferences. 1) Taught in Portuguese or Spanish or English in a city with a big Latin and African community 2) Easy access to students outside the film world, studying vastly different tracks cross-pollination and for inspiration 3) Big city.

The Torino Piemonte Film Commision in Italy has a long list of film education worldwide, more than covered here and including education from professional diploma courses to undergrad to graduate education. There are also a number of programs available in documentary filmmaking, as listed by The Independent magazine.

The List

So I decided to take on this challenge analytically and help out myself and other future MFA students. The following is a list curated by yours truly with a choice of  master’s programs in film directing and producing around the world, both in fiction and non-fiction (documentary) cinema, with the most concise but helpful comments I could find somewhere or ask for over social media, available here

Please feel free to add more resources and links in the comments. Also, if you’re a film student, fill out this survey about your experience. This is a work in progress.

Conclusion

There are many film schools to choose from. But its worth to remember, in the end, it’s not about the school. It’s about you, the people you meet, and the things you do together. Thanks for reading.

kris.haamer@gmail.com

A few months ago, after an unsuccesful attempt to whistle – and I have to admit with some frustration, even now I’m still unable to a whistle – I posted this random question on Quora: “What are some cultures where whistling plays a traditional or ritual role“. With hopes of learning which countries I should avoid.

So today, thanks to a Quorian called Jane Huang, I got my answer – “The Piraha”. It’s a tribe in the Amazonian, that have a “sufficiently simple language that they can whistle it”. Apparently, it’s very useful for communication while hunting in the jungle.

The Pirahã are not the only people to use this kind of whistled language.

There’s an in depth article on this fascinating language by the anthropologist Daniel L. Everett. There are more in Greece, and the Canary Islands. Getting good answers to such random questions that pain me is why I love Quora.

UNESCO whistled language video from the Canary Islands.

Here’s an overview of Alex Keller’s works for his latest exhibiton, taking place at the Brasilian Embassy here in Sao Tome. Exhibition opens on April 22.

Alex is the main character’s of my documentary, Tomé, replacing Ronny Key, who was able to go study in Lisbon, and thus stopped participating in the film.

My imagination is always asking lots of questions. What if. What if this would happen. What if that would come to pass?

How would that change the story?

I can easily get lost inside my own head. So I keep in mind 4 things that are sort of like my personal checklist. I let my thoughts fly around freely but I try to keep stuff (more-or-less) structured using the following.

One – Coherence. Do the images (and pieces of images) in my head add up to a story; a coherent narrative on the screen? How many images are there. What are the images that are missing. What is the right sequence for the images.

Two – Intensity. Can I feel the character? Do the images accurately convey the emotional highs and emotional lows the character experiences throughout the story?  - So the viewers too, can feel.

Three – Change. Does the story take me on a journey of discovery? If there’s nothing new I’ve learned by the end of the film, if there’s nothing new the character has acquired, why watch it. Every film is about some sort of change – be it inside, or outside the character.

Four – Originality. Is this a new story? If it isn’t, how do I differentiate the film? There are so many others! A change in setting may be enough to give new life to an ancient story.  A change in the circumstances of the character.

But what if…?

Kids have this amazing way of making their wishes come true. And I’m not talking about asking for candy… I’m talking about the deeper ambitions. Director Orlando Mesquita shows this realization in straightforward but memorable way in his short film The Ball. The story is simple:

A group of boys wants to play football but they have no ball. So what do they do?

They resolve to make their own football balls. How? Simple – out of condoms. There’s plenty of them; in fact international aid organizations send truck-loads of condoms to Mozambique. It’s an easy-access material. I’ve seen a similar story myself. With surf boards. A few years back one Australian surfer left his board in the southern part of Sao Tomé. And now, a few years later the beach is filled with kids on (admittedly imperfect) copies of home-made surf boards – carved out of palmwood. If you really want to, you can do it.