To film school, or not to film school. That is the eternal question that seems to never have an answer, or a lull in the collective conversation. As someone who did attend a formal film school, it’s probably no surprise that I’d recommend it as a way to network and sharpen your craft for four years in a controlled environment. Of course, not everyone feels the same.
Here are some of your favorite filmmakers who never attended a film school.
Akira Kurosawa
One of the most important filmmakers of all time, Kurosawa is often credited with improving the perception of international cinema exponentially throughout the second half of the twentieth century. His samurai films, often adapted from Shakespeare, are seen today as landmarks in the cinematic zeitgeist. What makes it even more impressive is Kurosawa’s unconventional entry into the film world.
In 1935, after studying film in his early life but never really considering it as a career, Kurosawa responded to a cold application for assistant director positions at the Photo Chemical Laboratories film studios, now referred to as Toho. After submitting a partially tongue-in-cheek essay about the fundamental issues facing Japanese cinema, filmmaker Kajirō Yamamoto saw the potential in Kurosawa, and insisted that he be hired onto the team.
He worked as an AD there for five years, before eventually starting work on his own projects, with his debut feature, Sanshiro Sugata, releasing in 1943.
Ava DuVernay
DuVernay seemed to explode onto the scene in 2014 when her film Selma about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. received widespread critical acclaim, and even a nomination for Best Picture. The first black woman to be nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Director, DuVernay has almost the exact opposite career trajectory that you may expect for a filmmaker of her stature.
She attended UCLA, where she double majored in English Literature and African American studies, and bounced around through various careers in entertainment like journalism, PR publicist, as well as the Urban Beauty Collective Promotional network. She didn’t even pick up a camera until 2005, when, at age 32, she made her first film for 6,000 dollars, a twelve-minute short based on the experiences of her mother’s struggles being a single parent growing up.
James Cameron
‘Avatar’Credit: Walt Disney Studios
This one is perhaps the most surprising, because for a more modern filmmaker whose entire brand is built upon shattering the boundaries of what the medium is capable of visually and technologically, the logical conclusion would be that he had some formal education in film. But not James Cameron.
Often critical of education systems in general, Cameron started at a community college studying physics, switched to English, and then quit entirely by the end of 1974. A connoisseur of various recreational drugs at the time, Cameron often experimented with LSD and cannabis in particular while reading up on the history and practicality of special effects. Everything changed for him in 1977 upon seeing the original Star Wars, and immediately after, he went full throttle on his filmmaking career.
Stanley Kubrick
Everyone is familiar with the signature style of Stanley Kubrick at this point. His singularity and presence as an artist are impossible to overstate. He also did not go to film school, which for many may seem puzzling, and even confusing as to how he was able to have such a fully formed visual language immediately upon entry. Well, his pre-filmmaker journey is certainly an interesting one.
Despite being an absolutely brilliant kid, Kubrick was introverted and despised school, often skipping it to go to movies. When he graduated high school in 1945, he was able to evade a college education entirely, much to the disdain of his family, due to the high demand for college admissions for soldiers returning home from World War II.
Instead, he began a career at Look Magazine, eventually channeling his photographic sensibilities into a career as a self-taught filmmaker.
Paul Thomas Anderson
‘Phantom Thread’Credit: Focus Features
This one is a little bit of a cheat because Paul Thomas Anderson actually did attend film school…for like two days.
He was enrolled in film school at NYU, but was left with an immediate bad taste in his mouth regarding the institution by his second day. While sitting in a lecture hall, Anderson has famously recounted that the professor giving the talk told students to immediately get out of his classroom, and likely film school altogether, if they were only there to learn how to make Terminator 2. Considering the director of Terminator 2 is also discussed in this article, you can likely imagine how poorly this comment was received by Anderson, who dropped out of the institution almost immediately after.
This clearly doesn’t seem to have affected his career negatively in any way, as his most recent film, One Battle After Another, was one of the most celebrated films of last year and took home the top prizes at the Academy Awards.
