Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague

The Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague or FAMU is a film school in Prague, Czech Republic, founded in 1946 as one of three branches of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. It is the fifth oldest film school in the world. The teaching language on most courses at FAMU is Czech, but FAMU also runs certain courses in English. The school has repeatedly been included on lists of the best film schools in the world by The Hollywood Reporter. In the 1960s and 1970s, several young directors from Yugoslavia were FAMU students (Rajko Grlić, Srđan Karanović, Emir Kusturica, Goran Marković, Goran Paskaljević and Lordan Zafranović). All of these directors would become very successful in the following decades, prompting the coinage of the term Praška filmska škola ("Prague film school"), or Praški talas ("Prague wave"), which is sometimes considered a prominent subgenre of the Yugoslav cinema. History The school was established between 1946 and 1948, as one of the three branches of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU), the fifth oldest film school in the world after Moscow, Berlin, Rome, and Paris. The school was initially based on the 4th floor of Havlickova 13, before moving in 1948 to the Vančura building at Klimenská 4, which would house theoretical and also some practical tuition until 1960. The new school also shared some facilities with the Czechoslovak Film Institute. However, when the institute was dissolved in 1949 by the new communist director of Czechoslovak State Film, Oldřich Macháček, many of the former staff became tutors at FAMU. In 1952 FAMU was given the Roxy Cinema, a former Jewish cinema at Dlouhá 33, which it used as a film studio from 1955. During the school's early years it faced numerous challenges, including a negative reception to its academic program from film-makers at Barrandov Studios, attempts to have the school closed, and political interference from the AMU Action Committee following the communist coup of 1948, which led to the expulsion of two students.