A fascinating program for documentary filmmakers has emerged in Europe. Called DocNomads it involves stays in three cities over the course of a year: Lisbon, Budapest and Brussels. Students work with resident instructors and master class guests in each location and make films in each city, and sometimes in the countryside as well. The students come from all over Europe and beyond. In Budapest Tamas Almasi heads the program and I recently visited there to offer a week long master class on selected issues and concepts in documentary. I had students from Ecuador, Belarus, Serbia, England, France, Italy, Russia, Hungary, the United States, and ten other countries, if not more. They come with filmmaking skills and an undergrad degree behind them and are ready for the new challenges the course offers. Language is one of them. The course is offered in English but in every location most of the students do not speak the local language. This makes their production work challenging but far from impossible. They are a resourceful, inventive group, among the best I’ve worked with, and the program is a brillaint model for how to think outside the somewhat zenophilic boundaries of much documentary production.

It’s a program that deserves emulation.