Cinema Art

Educational programme 'Cinema Art' was established in St. Petersburg University in 2007.

Cinema Artist profession has been greatly acclaimed from the beginning of the XX century – the starting point of cinema development in Russia.

The only institution to teach such professionals is (the) Art Department of VGIK (All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography, Moscow), and but a few graduated specialists came from there to work at the studios of Leningrad.

Sometimes graduates from other institutions (St. Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy, St. Petersburg State Art and Industry Academy named after Stieglitz) made their occupation work at Leningrad film studios, but their professional training – with rare exceptions – did not correspond with high professional standard of such work: in other words, their professionalism yielded greatly to that of VGIK graduated specialists.

Because of this state of affairs all the city film studios have a lot of staff problems. It is hard to believe, but at the world-known ‘Lenfilm’ studio there are next to none experienced cinema artists.

Cartoon film artistic director, being a most important link in a complex chain of cartoon? Film production, simply does not exist at our animation (?) studios.

The problem of raising professionals for the cinema became vital.

That is why in 2007 the ‘Cinema Art’ programme started in St. Petersburg University. This programme is the first high school for professional education in the field of visual technologies in film-making.

The students are being educated according to the following principle during 6 years they have their professional training at workshops led by highly experienced cinema artists working for a lot of years in film-making.

Head of the studio together with painting and drawing professor are leading professors at the workshop, and they are responsible for the whole complex of basic professional art education.