“Around the Fire…”
A Film Immersion Workshop
Jan 12 - Feb 22, 2025
The traditional legacy of "Around The Fire …" storytelling is the most appropriate metaphor for those who truly want to think about the holistic nature of the motion picture medium. This metaphor becomes crucial for those artists who want to inquire, comprehend and develop their own individual cinematic narrative accent.
Our individual, unique narrative logic – the source of one’s most organic literary or aesthetic wealth – comes straight out of our individual cultural upbringing. Traditional narrative forms, which we ingest from our surroundings consciously or subconsciously from the time of our childhood, live within our beings. These naturally possessed, aesthetic assets sustain our sense of continuity. And, they are also the most critical of resources, in the nurturing of one’s unique narrative accent or storytelling voice.
A Film Immersion Workshop
We have only to look at our forebears who have acculturated their individual imaginative mindset through Folklore, Music, and Dance to the arts of Woodcarving, Weaving, Pottery, Quilting and Body Arts. In contemporary times, we see in many indigenous communities who have retained and transformed their narrative expressions from the time of Cave Art, to the fireside, and all the way on to the screen.
Through the legacy of our unique cultures, we can develop our particular and unique ways of seeing the world through the art of motion pictures. And since the motion picture medium works on the aesthetics of light our socio-psychological ways of seeing are based on the refraction of light. This is where we empower our cultural notions and meanings of our humanity. Hence to bring this home to African American film artists, there is opportunity to bring about through film what musicians have created in the medium of jazz.
What is the Film Immersion Workshop?
Haile Gerima, internationally recognized filmmaker - has fashioned his own approach to filmmaking, as can be seen in SANKOFA, TEZA, and other films. Gerima has taught filmmaking for over 40 years at Howard University and workshops around the world.
This film immersion workshop will guide students through the technical journey from idea to script. We will deeply examine how scriptwriting, editing, cinematography, and directing are interconnected. Editing, being the core of film language, will be emphasized as it shapes and influences the other elements. The workshop will highlight how effective scriptwriting is closely tied to editing, and how editing integrates with cinematography and directing.
“Are you discontented in the way the film culture does not accommodate your sensibility, or your temperament?”
At the end of this immersion workshop, successful students will be empowered to take the next step in filmmaking. This workshop should be thought of as the “Pre-Pre-Production” session that provides the basis for the next stages or pre-production, production, and post-production. The traditionally separated roles of sound, cinematography, editing, and directing will be taught as inter-related entities in the subsequent workshops. Tentative dates for this workshop will be posted in the future.
Immersion Workshop Instructors
Filmmakers Alan Ferguson, Bradfrod Young, Daniel E. Williams and Russel Santos will be join Haile Gerima
All workshop participants are expected to be
physically present as the workshop takes place
in person in Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD.
Tuition
$1500
Join us for the first installment of an immersive film workshop series with acclaimed filmmaker Haile Gerima! Beginning January 13th the first cohort will embark on a journey in storytelling. Joining Haile Gerima will be a cast of accomplished filmmakers, each leading workshops in the pillars of filmmaking.
Tuition Payment is Required in Full by Dec 2nd, 2024