NEW PROGRAM FOR A BACHELOR’S DEGREE (B. F. A.)
Animation artists are blessed with a unique, magical opportunity – they can create worlds, enact the relevant laws for these worlds, blow life into them through motion and choreography and fill them with substance through a story – the narrative. All of this can take place using a simple pencil over paper, or through the latest, state-of-the-art digital technologies.
Video artists can break free from the confines of the narrative and convert the “camera-pen” in their hands into a writing or drawing implement, as lithe and as pointed as written language, poetry, sculpture or painting – and equally effective at conveying desires, thoughts and ideas, or alternately – at documenting or recounting a story.
Video and animation meet one another on the screen.
The screens of the movie theater, the television set, the personal computer and the cellular telephone constitute (whether we admit it or not) a central stage for cultural, artistic and communication-related processes in the digital age. The Screen-Based Arts Department at the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design, which offers the animation and video & new media programs and combines elements of both, provides a unique opportunity to students interested in these fields, to obtain in-depth, extensive instruction in the visual arts (drawing, painting, sculpting, photography) and cinematographic arts (animation, documentary films, new media and video art) with access to the latest resources and a major emphasis on content quality and production professionalism.
The goal of the Screen-Based Arts Department is to train and qualify independent, original, multidisciplinary and professional creators, possessing a personal and critical language, as well as to develop new artistic fields while breaking through the barriers between cinematography, animation and interactive digital media.
The Curriculum
The curriculum at the Screen-Based Arts Department consists of a four-year program divided into two specialized areas: animation and video. The first two years of the program are devoted to fundamental and introductory courses, some of which are taken jointly by all students while others are taken separately, according to the student’s specialized area. The third year focuses on the selected specialized area and on common optional courses, and the fourth year is devoted primarily to the final project.
The animation program enables students, as of the third year, to specialize in classic hand-drawn animation, in computerized 3D animation and in Stop Motion animation, including various combinations between the three. Additionally, a new specialized field, computer games, is currently emerging. Graduates of the animation program are involved, among other things, in independent film projects, in the production of feature films, in animation projects for TV series, in animated advertising, in movie special effects and in the development of animation elements for computer games.
The video and new media program enables students to specialize in documentary, personal and experimental video, as well as in new media and video art. The program encourages the students to develop a sharp outlook and a personal language while presenting questions and making statements that have a social, political, personal and cultural effect, formulated using the medium and the relevant tools. Program graduates are active in moviemaking, in documentary films, in galleries and museums in Israel and around the world.
Professor David Mezach - Provisional Head of Screen Based Arts Department