Paris Film Masterclass

From April 1st to 3rd, I held in Paris what I can only describe as the best masterclass ever given at a film school. Hosted for three intensive days by the new DBIMA Film Academy in Paris, I was honored to give a kick-off masterclass on the perspective of European cinema to 7 special students from India and Sri Lanka. A few weeks earlier, I was extremely reluctant to give up this enlightening experience, given my various commitments and an urgent work deadline... However, my experience has taught me that teaching teaches the teacher something mysterious and unexpected. First of all, whoever teaches has to review everything they know, has to call upon all their acquired knowledge, dedicating a few days to the search for a new synthesis... This fascinating process provokes a new growth in the mentor who, in the very moment they impart a given knowledge... is filled with new wisdom... And so I left, wondering what I could give to these seven young men and women in their twenties and thirties. Incredibly, it was the most enriching teaching experience I've ever had in my life... I was about to say rhetorically "one of the best of my life" but I corrected myself in time and went for this very well-founded exaggeration... On the first day, I hit the ground running, illustrating Italian Neorealism, the French Nouvelle Vague, connecting it all to New Hollywood, with brief incursions into Kieślowski and Malick. We then analyzed the screenplay of one of the students, chosen by the film school as an exercise for everyone in filming. On the second day, I illustrated the main directors from whom to derive all the main editing styles, and we began to draw the storyboard from a chosen scene of the screenplay. The third, exceptional day, we tackled casting; in the first part of the day, we received the writers; in the second part, in turn, I made the students directors, inviting them to shoot the chosen scene according to the storyboard; and finally, in the third part, we summed up, talking about everything we had learned in the three days. There were 4 most beautiful moments that I will carry with me for the rest of my life: the first, on the morning of the third day, when, talking about film editing, at a certain point I got up from my chair and revealed a technique that I had deduced after years of observation, a trade secret, some would say... As soon as I revealed it, one student's eyes lit up: "I understand! I understand! Crystal clear!" he exclaimed in the grip of a mini-epiphany, then he applauded. He applauded me in front of everyone! I had never seen anything like it... A few hours later, a student, meeting for the first time the actress who would play the mother character she had written, was moved at the end of the casting, shaking her hand... I didn't understand, she candidly said, "It's the first time I've met one of my characters, sir!"... The third moment: the end of filming, when I gathered those seven students around a table and asked them to write me a list of the 10 takeaways from my masterclass. And finally, the fourth, the fourth remains a number in your imagination, because it's so incredible and moving that I prefer to keep it to myself or narrate it in person to those who ask me. So... Ask me in private! Thank you, guys and girls, for the attention, the passion, and the lightness with which we spent three memorable days together. Have a good journey and bring much hope with your films! Thanks DBIMA! 

Manuel de Teffé