Message from Vikram Channa

It’s very exciting to be part of the launch of an online film school that takes the life work of a genuine master of filmmaking as it’s starting point. Akira Kurosawa was ahead of the curve; the original globalist. He strived to push the universal language of cinema into more robust visual directions. Just look at the way he approached movement in each of his shots to strikingly communicate the purpose of the scene. Simple and elegant, every Kurosawa shot used that old bedrock of filmmaking craft – beginning, middle and end to build his epic ideas step by step. His ability to so naturally ‘motivate’ a scene by generating ‘momentum’ in truly visual and visceral ways was original. It made his cinema borderless and yet so rooted in a Japanese context. These very qualities are the driving force of the Akira Kurosawa School of Film and behind a truly unique MFA program, so relevant for the ‘glo-cal’ world we work and play in.