Re:Anima (Erasmus Mundus), Master of Arts (Art and Design)

About the studies

Students will become familiarized with three entirely different locations, both culturally and industry-wise, and will be continuously motivated to broaden their cultural horizon. This will provide them not only with a varied palette of skills in animation filmmaking, but also with an international network and orientation, which is invaluable in a sector where international co-production is at the heart of the industry.

The integration of different forms of expanded animation into the programme is a new curricular feature which does not exist in traditional animation programmes that are usually oriented towards short film production with a narrow focus and specialization in animation techniques. Re:Anima acknowledges and fosters the importance of using animation outside the film and TV series formats, hence the fact that live animation, VR and visualization are considered essential in the programme. Re:Anima will dedicate a semester to the use of various animation techniques in documentary production, while other semesters focus on fiction formats (film and TV) and experimental uses of animation. This broad understanding of the field opens unbounded possibilities to the students in terms of their graduation projects.

This programme has been built with a strong focus in a number of core subjects that cover the essential areas of animation production and animation studies. These subjects are organized along five tracks:

• Research Based Animation;
• Creative Ateliers;
• Animation techniques and technologies;
• Animation production and management;
• History and Critical reception of animation.

Underlying these five tracks is a common system of workshops that convoke social topics with the goal of promoting critical and social awareness on the side of the students and inform their projects with content that strives for originality, creativity and innovation.

Study objectives

Re:Anima proposes a curriculum and didactic approach that balance artistic and technological dimensions, overcoming existing tensions between artistic and technology-driven programmes. Additionally, Re:Anima begins with an overarching concept that the animation creative process must be driven by cultural awareness and a critical appreciation of the world around us.

Content of the studies

Re:Anima is a Joint Master degree programme offered by a consortium of three universities in Belgium, Finland and Portugal:

• Universidade Lusófona, Film and Media Arts Department, Lisbon, Portugal
• Aalto University, Elo Department of Film, Television and Scenography, Helsinki, Finland
• Luca School of Arts, C-Mine Campus, Genk, Belgium

Each semester will focus on one specific field.

LUCA will be the owner of the 1st semester dedicated to narrative and non-narrative storytelling.  Specific attention will be given to the development of narrative, poetic, abstract and interactive content for differentiated audiences.

Given that the 2nd semester emphasizes technology, Aalto, with its strong technological expertise, has been chosen as the second venue. 2nd semester will be dedicated to expanded use of animation and experimental approaches. It strengthens and broadens the students’ creative potential as they explore the boundaries of animation expression with various technologies. After the end of that semester all students come together for a summer school held in Lapland in partnership with the MidnightSun Film Festival, during which they will attend to a series of workshops, master classes and get involved with the industry present at the festival.

The 3rd semester in Lusófona will be focused on exploring documentary approaches, besides promoting the development of the students’ entrepreneurial mind-set. It will be dedicated to animated documentary with a social reflection based content. It aims to position students within the format of documentary from a historic and analytical perspective.

In the fourth and final semester, students are assigned to each one of the schools accordingly to the area they are working in their final Project, and presence of mentor. During this final semester, the students develop the project and the written report that constitute the individual graduation project and then meet again in the end of the course for one common public evaluation session that includes projects screened in front of an internal and external evaluation board. Besides this student mobility scheme, with the students moving to each school in accordance with their areas of interest and each school competences, specific teacher mobility is envisioned, namely in order to support joint pitching and project development activities.

Career opportunities

The students take part in an international and diverse learning community with students and faculty from different cultures and from all over the world. Teamwork in animation is therefore multicultural and multigenerational. By bridging art, technology and cultural backgrounds, the fundamental innovation of the programme rests in building animation professionals who are international artists, technical collaborators and global citizens.

Tuition fees and scholarships

The programme has a joint participation fee. Candidates are eligible for an Erasmus Mundus scholarship, awarded on the basis of excellence. Further information is available on the programme website.

Admission

For information on the admission requirements and application process, please visit the programme website https://www.reanima.eu/application-requirements/.