Curtain Up For Bournemouth Screen Academy

Bournemouth is officially a hotbed of talent for new and dynamic filmmakers following the formal launch of the Bournemouth Screen Academy.

The Bournemouth Screen Academy is a joint collaboration between the Arts Institute at Bournemouth and Bournemouth University’s Media School. Funded by Skillset, the Sector Skills Council for the Audio Visual Industries, the Screen Academy network is endorsed by the UK film industry as providing the best education and skills development for the future workforce at a further, higher and postgraduate level.

Academy Award winning writer and director Anthony Minghella joined three days of celebrations by offering an insight into his life and career during a special ‘master class’ which officially opened the new venture.

Minghella has made such notable films as Truly, Madly, Deeply and Cold Mountain as well as The English Patient which was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won nine, including Best Director. He is a great advocate for British film and was instrumental in designating Bournemouth as a Screen Academy following a rigorous selection process involving representatives from industry and education funding bodies which also included film producer Lord Puttnam.

“This is enormously important for students. I’d like to see everybody in the UK have as much access as I have now to the British film industry” he enthused before describing the Bournemouth Screen Academy partnership as "a good passport to get into the film industry... the students here are very lucky; it means a great deal to have this recognition for Bournemouth as one of the great training centres in the South of England to receive the [Skillset] kitemark. Any form of endorsement or clarification about what a course comprises of is going to be valuable."

He also provided some words of advice for students wanting to enter the film industry when he told them they have to be truly committed to their careers and admitted that he rarely has the luxury of time off from work, “If you like something, that’s a good place to start…you have to want is so badly…there are too many people who want to do this job and unless you care about it, the luxury of opportunity shouldn’t be ignored.”

Throughout the 3-day launch event of the Bournemouth Screen Academy, other guest speakers from the film industry shared their experience with the students. They included Stephen Deutsch, the composer and professor of Post-Production at Bournemouth University, who opened the event with his lecture entitled ‘2001 – The Secret Music’, Chris Landreth, the Academy Award winning animator, who received worldwide acclaim for his animated film ‘Ryan’, Huw Penallt Jones, the film producer and CEO of the UK’s leading film post-production facility De Lane Lea, and Alan Plater, the screenwriter and novelist, who won the Dennis Potter BAFTA Award in 2005. There was also the screening of a film, ‘Peppermint’ by two Bournemouth graduates from 2003. Gabby Morton Jones and James Fair have previously had their work aired on Channel 4.

Bournemouth Screen Academy, with its new funding of £1m, is one of seven institutions across the UK now working together to provide new courses, summer schools, work placements, and master classes among other initiatives. The institutions within the network will also have exclusive use of the Skillset 100, a database resource of 100 top industry professionals committed to sharing their knowledge and expertise through master classes, workshops and guest lectures.

The launch was a phenomenal success, and as David Hanson, Director of the Bournemouth Screen Academy commented, “This is the beginning of a powerful new partnership between two of the most highly regarded media training institutions in the UK, and a radical new initiative which will make a fundamental difference in the South West and beyond to training for careers in the British Film Industry.”

CONTACTS

Bournemouth University Press office:

press@bournemouth.ac.uk

Charles Elder; Tel: +44 (0) 1202 961032; Mob: (07768) 771870

Zoë Monk ; Tel: +44 (0) 1202 961033; Mob: (07738) 143100

News 16th June 2005

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Curtain Up For Bournemouth Screen Academy

News 16th June 2005