The School
A BIT OF HISTORYIn 2013 La Guarmba Film Festival renovated an old open-air cinema in Calabria, a region in the south of Italy.
In 2014 the festival’s association decided to start a school. In its first edition, the school trained 45 people, refining their creative skills.
La Scuola Delle Scimmie (The Monkey’s School) is an itinerant project initiated by the La Guarimba Film Festival’s Cultural Association. Founded by Giulio Vita and Sara Fratini, the aim of the school is to teach up-and-coming professionals from illustration and independent cinema industries how to produce and distribute quality artistic content with limited resources; to have a cinema and illustration school that trains its students through participatory democracy and team work.
The Monkey’s School uses experimental learning techniques that demand student participation and constant interaction and facilitation from the course tutors.
This year we decided to include an artist residency element: school participants will be living together for the duration of the course. This will encourage people from around the world to apply but it will also increase the spirit of collaboration and cooperation around each project.
WHERE AND WHENThis year The School will happen from the 7th to the 27th of September 2015 at FARM CULTURAL PARK, an art gallery and artist residency in Favara, near Agrigento, Sicily.
THE ILLUSTRATION SCHOOLThe tutor on the illustration course is Sara Fratini, illustrator and street artist who lives and works between Italy and Spain.
SERIGRAPHY COURSE (1week) by Tina Siuda (Poland)
Introduction to techniques and methods of serigraphy
PATTERN COURSE (1week) by Ana Seixas (Portugal)
Manual and digital techniques for pattern production
Software: Adobe Photoshop
SELF-PUBLISHING COURSE (1 week) by Mikel Murillo (Spain)
Introduction to self-publishing with the production of collective and individual fanzines
Software: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator
3D CHARACTER COURSE (1week) by Pedro Alón (Spain)
Cration of 3D characters and modelling with paper, pasticine and cardboard.
MASTERCLASS “How to create a community” by Giulio Vita
THE FESTIVALThe last week of The School coincides with La Guarimba Film Festival On Tour screenings, bringing cinema to the people and people to the cinema.
The end of the film course coincides with the opening of the Film Fest, screening the finished documentaries produced over the previous 3 weeks and exhibiting collectively the work of the illustration course at FARM CULTURAL PARK.