Courses 01

A wonderful learning experience in the beautiful and peaceful landscapes of Alentejo. Together in a small and cozy group you learn how to create a story based on emotions, techniques for interview and camera work. All this made very accessible for beginner filmmakers as you are under the watchful guidance of the teachers helping you along every step of the way to ensuring you leave with fundamentals to create a meaningful documentary. A documentary that could be the first step towards your career of becoming a documentary filmmaker. 
Thanks to the organisers for their passion and patience. And for making this whole experience feel like an unforgettable holiday retreat!

Amir Hossein Zadeh

I had a very nice time in a great ambience in the beautiful landscape of Alentejo.
Ton is a very good teacher who really cares about his students’ progress. So I learned a lot about planning a documentary portrait, working with a camera and other film equipment but also using the language of pictures to express the story I want to tell.

Michael Morsch

The course was given at a school in a beautiful small village in Alentejo.

This extraordinary setting was an interesting experience on its own.

I had a great time, got inspired and excited and learned a lot.
Until then I combined my poems with photography.

From now on I can make (more) poetry in motion!

Marlou van den Broek

Thanks to Portugal Filmschool and its teachers, I´m finally ready to put my plans into action. I didn’t know it’d be possible to learn so much about documentary filmmaking in such a short amount of time! There was a great balance of learning things in class and actually putting those lessons into practice. My classmates and I all made our very first short documentary which taught us so much and was a lot of fun. This course turned out to be a game changer for me and I loved the experience of spending time with such a nice group of people.

Daisy Cools

Thanks Ton, Katinka and the film school team!! Made my first steps from photography to moving images:camera handling, interviewing, creating a small documentary.Collaborating with nice people to achieve a common goal. Monte de Estrada, cafe Patricia, Alentejo, I’ll be back  ..

Willem Bekker

As an Anthropologist and film lover I always dreamed about making my own documentary. High expenses of classes and lack of time kept me away from following my dream for a long time. Accidentally reading about the Portugal summer school on the internet, I thought this might be the first step in following my dream.

Now at the end of the course, I believe taking part in this course was a good decision. It was a great opportunity to meet amazing teachers and learn from their experiences. Besides that I met nice people and enjoyed two weeks of living with them in the camp. I would love to add that meeting Ton as a teacher with his long term experience in my field of interest was an amazing opportunity because talking to him made me more precise about what I want to do in future and the way to do that.  

Maryam Abbasi