Every two years, a group of 8 – 12 mobile people are selected by the jury consisting of the director of the Academy of Moving People & Images, members of the board of advisors, and lecturers. It is not necessary for the participants to have a background in cinema, however, it is important for them to have a passion for filmmaking.
Within our selection process, we acknowledge the existing gender inequality in the film industry and strive to change it. The Academy is open to people from all communities that historically have been subjected to oppression and marginalization such as Sami or Roma people in Finland.
We provide 2 years of hands-on, fee-free courses for participants. They will make their own short films under the guidance of mobile filmmakers and film industry professionals in Finland, performing all the essential roles necessary to realize their films. Our goal is for the films to be presented at local and international film festivals. Upon graduation, they are ready to work professionally in the film industry.
The Academy provides wider professional support and access to resources and community, encouraging participants to learn through practice. All lecturers offer the students practical and theoretical support to enhance and realize their individual projects. The focus of the Academy is on narrative film, however, there will be lectures on documentary film as well. In addition, through our theoretical lectures, our participants will acquire a postcolonial and feminist approach to film theories.
The structure of the Academy is conceived to eliminate bureaucratic processes, dismiss hierarchy, and create a space where everyone can express their knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits, without the concern of being subjected to discriminatory or patronizing behaviour.
The diversity among the community of the Academy is enlightening, as they exchange ideas and experiences to confront multiple power structures of domination that continue to exist not only in the film industry, but in classrooms, research, language, ideas, history, and institutions, among others. The theoretical and epistemic knowledge of the Academy will have a lived dimension to it—’lived’ in the sense that it foregrounds the experiences of those who have been excluded from modernist knowledge production.