Sam Spiegel School Film and Television - History

History

The Jerusalem Film and Television School was founded in 1989 by the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture and the Jerusalem Foundation. In 1996, it was renamed in honor of the Academy Award-winning American Jewish producer Sam Spiegel, following his family’s decision to contribute annually to the school.

Located in the Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem, the school has a student body of 170. It offers three tracks:

• Full Track – Training students in directing, screenwriting, cinematography, editing and production.
• Screenwriting Track – Training students in writing for film and television
• Entrepreneur-Producer Track – Training students for production in the entire realm of media.

The school is a non-profit public organization. The chairman of its board of directors is Erez Vigodman. According to school records 80% of its graduates currently work in key professions in the film and television industry.

In 1988, a student revolt broke out in the film department of the Beit Zvi School of Art in Ramat Gan, then the sole film school supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture. Charging that Beit Zvi gave preference to the acting track, the film students demanded self-rule. The Education Minister at the time, Yitzhak Navon established a public inquiry that supported the principles of the students’ position. He then decided to create an independent school for film and television, the first of its kind in Israel, to be directed by filmmakers.

After consulting with mayors of different Israeli cities, the mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, and Ruth Cheshin, president of the Jerusalem Foundation, saw a window of opportunity to “bring the ocean to Jerusalem”, in their words. They committed to match government funding. In July 1989, Ruth Cheshin asked film director Renen Schorr to draw up plans for the school, which opened in Jerusalem in November 1989.

At the onset, the academic program was three and a half years long. The school championed providing a broad professional foundation in all aspects of the film industry: writing, directing fiction, directing documentary, cinematography, production, editing, recording, and more. Emphasis was placed upon providing a theoretical and cultural foundation for its students, with a constant striving for excellence.

Unlike other existing films schools in Israel (like the film department of Tel Aviv University and the Beit Zvi school) the Sam Spiegel School worked to classify the short film as a genre, identifying itself as a “story-telling school” and placed central importance on the hero in the story and the narrative. Similarly, the school stressed the focus of a director’s work, paraphrasing the words of Hitchcock: “The job of a director is not just to work with the screenwriter, the actors, the cameraman, the editor and the composer, but to direct the audience.” The school was bound to transform the work of a director into an act of sensitivity, directed at reaching and stirring the viewer.

In 1992/3, the school went public for the first time, participating in the Jerusalem Film Festival and a series of Graduate Film Showings in various cinemateques, presenting thirty of its films – first films and final projects of the first graduating class.

The public, the Israeli film community and the media were surprised by the uncommon style of the school’s films, and praised the school and its films (in the Israel Film Institute Competition for Short Films, the school’s films took 12 out of 13 awards). The one film that stood out among the first collection of movies was “Party Line”, directed by Ohav Flantz, whose new campy style aroused a good deal of attention. The film became synonymous with the school in its early days.

The school succeeded in showing the work of its graduates on Channel 2, which began broadcasting in late 1992, and built a strategic partnership with one of its franchises, Tel Ad. Every year, from 1993 until its license period ended in 2005, Tel Ad broadcast nationally all of the graduate films in a specially designed series, "Shorts at Midnight". Graduates of the school’s first two classes were quickly absorbed into the television industry, thanks to the creation of Channel 2, among other factors, and the simultaneous development of cable network broadcasting.

In July 1993, the school showed its films at the Jerusalem International Film Festival. The panel of judges, including director of the London Film Festival Sheila Whitaker, director Dusan Makavejev, critic David Robinson, actor Haim Topol, and British producer Mark Shivas, were effusive in praise, stating that all of the school’s entries in the competition were universal in their language and boasted excellent international potential.

In November, 1996, a milestone was reached when the Museum of Modern Art in New York presented the school’s first major retrospective. At the opening night ceremony, which was attended by Teddy Kollek, the Spiegel family, graduates of the school, an array of film producers and members of the New York film industry, the school’s name was officially changed from the Jerusalem Film and Television School to the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, Jerusalem.

Speaking at the event, MOMA Chief Curator Larry Kardish said of the school’s films, “Although each is substantially different from the other, they all seem to share some significant and impressive characteristics. Whether fiction or documentary, narrative or experimental, they are all fresh, quirky, surprising and pithy. That they were well-made is to be expected, but that they also appeared to be effortlessly realized, naturally based in social realities, and psychologically sophisticated is out of the ordinary... The Sam Spiegel School is sending Israeli cinema in a new and exciting direction; its spirit is crossing borders, and its films are a most welcome presence invigorating the international scene. ”