collage1. University of Southern California
This is the year to visit USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, because it’s celebrating — with big public exhibits, screenings and events — the 90th anniversary of the day Douglas Fairbanks Jr. founded it during a fencing match with USC’s president. (If you’re keeping track, that was Feb. 4, 1929.) Ever since, the school has been swashbuckling its way to victory, partly thanks to consistent leadership.
Dean Elizabeth M. Daley has reigned for 27 years, and for 25 of them the school’s Entertainment Technology Center has brought students together with bigwigs at major studios, Cisco, Lucasfilm and Microsoft. Alums dominate the industry with projects ranging from blockbusters (the billion-dollar hit “Black Panther” came from USC-trained writer-director Ryan Coogler and Marvel Cinematic Universe uber-producer Kevin Feige) to the 30 alum films and shows at Sundance this year, including the socially conscious breakout “Sorry to Bother You” (featuring four alumni) and the smartphone-and-laptop-shot “Searching” (involving 10 alumni — producer Natalie Qasabian calls it “a USC mafia production”).
USC’s Ariel Heller and Devon Manney won student Academy Awards, and alums Lee Unkrich (“Coco”) and James Ivory (“Call Me by Your Name”) won Oscars for movies that helped push entertainment to new heights in culturally inclusive storytelling. USC and the Department of State launched the Middle East Media Initiative to create intercultural collaborations — good timing, since Saudi Arabia recently legalized movie theaters.
USC has strengths in too many areas to list. Teresa Cheng (Lucasfilm, DreamWorks Animation) came on as animation & digital arts chair, Princeton Review ranked it No. 1 yet again for game design, and USC Comedy — the first such program in America — continues to grow, with Lisa Kudrow holding a master class and George Lucas funding the Robin Williams Endowed Chair in Comedy.
2. American Film Institute
Like its perennial rivals USC and NYU, AFI Conservatory’s current class has a 50-50 male-female ratio (with 42 percent coming from outside the U.S.), and AFI Fellows who aren’t fellas are achieving at the highest levels: Patty Jenkins (AFI 2000) is shooting “Wonder Woman: 1984,” and Rachel Morrison (2006) became the first woman to land a cinematography Oscar nomination (for “Mudbound”), then did “Black Panther.” More than 700 women applied for AFI’s new Fox-backed tuition-free cinematography program for 20 newbie women auteurs.
The elite squad of 140 AFI Fellows per year are in classes of 14 to 28 students, receiving personal attention from legends of the industry. Quentin Tarantino, Sofia Coppola and Guillermo del Toro do master classes, Gus Van Sant and editor Tatiana Riegel (“I, Tonya”) are AFI Mentors, and new faculty include “Like Crazy” director Drake Doremus and producers Lianne Halfon (“Juno”) and Janet Yang (“The Joy Luck Club”). AFI Conservatory artistic director James L. Brooks took a thesis film, Icebox, developed it with multiple Fellows and released it as a feature. At Sundance 2018, 63 alums screened work and 21 alums got 2018 Emmy nominations, topping last year’s 17. AFI had a tumultuous 2017 when faculty rebelled against dean Jan Schuette, but new dean Richard Gladstein has evidently righted the ship, because AFI is up on this year’s poll.
3. University of California, Los Angeles
Alums of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television had a good year — more than $3.76 billion in global film grosses, with hits from “Black Panther” to “The Big Sick,” and the 1,880th all-time major awards nomination. But in a way, one alum’s achievement more dramatically captures the potential impact of a UCLA TFT education: Acting graduate Michael Stuhlbarg was in three Oscar Best Picture nominees, “Call Me by Your Name,” “The Shape of Water” and “The Post.”
UCLA is like a key to the city of Hollywood (also Telluride and Cannes, where students meet directors at the film festivals and get a first-look opportunity with Vivendi/Canal+). Luminaries flock to give UCLA master classes, from Brian Grazer to Helen Hunt to Ted Sarandos. Three students in the new Sony Crackle Initiative sold options on TV shows, and one, Gaia Violo’s “Absentia,” got a full order from Amazon. Bigger yet, alumnus Steven Canals took his assignment for UCLA TFT’s 284B writing course and sold it to Ryan Murphy as “Pose,” the FX series for which he’s now executive producer along with Murphy and Brad Falchuk.
UCLA TFT is out to change the world, not just movies, and alums who did so earned major kudos: Charles Burnett with an honorary AMPAS Governors Award and Ava DuVernay the PGA Visionary Award. UCLA TFT Dean Teri Schwartz just coproduced the school’s first-ever feature film, “Waterschool,” an environmental documentary that sent seven students to profile river dwellers on five continents, mentored by Oscar nominee Lucy Walker. It was seen at Cannes, Sundance, the World Economic Forum in Davos, and is now on Netflix.
4. New York University
No question, the big theme in film education now is diversity, and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts’ Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film and Television is all over it. Consider the recent alumni firsts: Dee Rees (“Mudbound”) became the first black woman nominated for an Oscar for best adapted screenplay, Cathy Yan the first Asian woman to direct a superhero flick (Warner/DC’s “Harley Quinn” with Margot Robbie), Reed Morano the first female drama directing Emmy winner in 22 years, and Rachel Morrison — educated at both NYU and AFI — the first female cinematography Oscar nominee.
Graduate film artistic director Spike Lee won the Grand Prix at Cannes for “BlacKkKlansman,” the cinematic antidote to “The Birth of a Nation.” New graduate Kevin Wilson won at the Student Academy Awards and BAFTA and got an Oscar nomination for his film about Emmett Till. Three alums took top dramatic Sundance prizes (“The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” “The Kindergarten Teacher” and “Monsters and Men”), and A.B. Shawky’s Egypt-set film “Yomeddine” nabbed a spot in the main competition at Cannes, rare for a thesis film.
For the second year in a row, NYU students (Angela Cheng and Sasie Sealy) won the AT&T: Untold Stories $1 million pitch challenge. NYU writing alums Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker earned raves for “Love, Simon” and became showrunners for “This Is Us,” and faculty member Daniel Goldfarb is on staff at Emmy magnet “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” NYU’s cachet began in alumnus Martin Scorsese’s day, but it has not waned any more than Scorsese has.
5. California Institute of the Arts
Cal Arts School of Film/Video founder Walt Disney had to mortgage his house to finish Sleeping Beauty, but CalArts alums (known as “Calartians”) have done better lately — since 1985, their animation hits have grossed $43 billion. They’ve won the Best Animated Feature Oscar 11 times, most recently with co-director Adrian Molina’s “Coco,” while Brad Bird’s “Incredibles 2” had the biggest debut ($180 million) of any animated film in history, even when you adjust for inflation.
But it’s not strictly animation that happens at CalArts. Brenda Chapman (“Brave”) is making her live-action debut with “Come Away,” and James Mangold, still aglow from his 2018 Oscar-nominated “Logan,” got a green light for Ford v. Ferrari for Chernin Entertainment/Twentieth Century Fox. Mangold, who won $1,000 for his first student film and grossed $619 million for “Logan,” is a great example of what makes CalArts valuable: Mentored by prof Alexander Mackendrick (“Sweet Smell of Success”), he studied filmmaking for two years, then transferred to the acting program. Mangold ended up studying alongside Don Cheadle, an actor whose films have grossed way over $7 billion and who has said of CalArts, “I would say that 100 percent I would not be where I am today had I not had my experience here.”
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