SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION: CREATIVITY, RESEARCH, AND CRITICAL
THINKING

The School of Communication (locally referred to as facom) was one of the very first schools in Brazil to see this field as an integrated experience covering a wide area and to pose the revolutionary approach needed for the new times. Since the late 1960s, it has sought to graduate enterprising professionals who are aware of the potential of transformations based on communication as decisive resources for 21st-century living.

The School therefore wagers on the idea of continuing education and invests in an educational policy of valorizing and encouraging research. In fact, this policy pursues three objectives: stimulating critical thinking, thus helping students perceive needs for intervention in the field they will be working in; creativity in conceiving and designing innovative solutions; and management ability as essential if this inventive and transformative work is to be done efficiently.

facom takes this road on the basis of its experience of following the revolutions and transformations the world has undergone in the second half of the 20th century, and especially in the media. The School has a history too, since its origins go back to the early days of FAAP. From the art museum and art courses, facom naturally inherited the aim of participating in and influencing the cultural stock of its target public. It succeeded in bringing together - at one single event - figures such as actresses Fernanda Montenegro, Eva Wilma, Regina Duarte, or Véronique Genest (from the French Julie Lescaut series), to mention just a few of the more prominent artistes. The event was a debate on the educational or merely recreational role of tv and took place in São Paulo in 2001, with support from tv Globo and tf1 from France. In 1998, FAAP (through its film studies course) together with the Nestlé Foundation in Brazil published the first dictionary of Brazilian film stars (by Antônio Leão Silva Neto), with 1,400 entries for the period 1908-1998. In 2004, film restorers tackled the only surviving sequence of the Brazilian film Gigolete (1924), directed in Rio de Janeiro by the Italian director Vittorio Verga. These are just two examples from the extensive past of the School.

facom was formally founded in 1967, as was the School of Visual Arts, and offered qualifications in Journalism, Public Relations, and Publicity and Advertising. There was also a broad-based course that covered Film, Radio, and tv, which was later split into two different qualifications in 1976: "Film" and "Radio and tv." In fact, facom was the first school in Brazil to pose an ambitious project combining several different qualifications and structure them as a school of media studies (or communication). It offered specific courses based on a methodological proposal that took an integrated and broadbased approach to media studies.

Over the years, and more particularly in the 1990s, a steady flow of major investments equipped FAAP's School of Communication with a model infrastructure based on quality and technology. Its studios and laboratories set standards for radio, television, and film producers, as well as communication agencies all over Brazil. These students enjoy contact with technology that the market is often using only experimentally or in an incipient manner.

In addition to holding events relating to each of the individual courses, the School consolidated its Communication Week of debates and conferences. The basic curriculum for its four courses comprises core humanities disciplines focusing on creativity, aesthetic education, and the development of critical and transformative faculties. All facom teaching staff are full professors. Disciplines concentrate on the arts, philosophy, theory of communication, and social sciences. The aim is a repertoire developing strong experimental skills and specific activities related to the employment market.

The underlying premise or concept is that a student's education should comprise more than just curriculum disciplines. A broad range of real-world experience is required too. In addition to laboratories, surveys, and interaction with the market, this approach involves an environment of questioning or provocation, directing to the world outside the classroom. Students themselves must work on the issues and propose answers. By stimulating their critical and creative expression, they learn to understand the society they live in and work as agents of change in building the future.

PUBLICITY AND ADVERTISING

Most courses in Publicity and Advertising steer students toward a particular segment of the market, whereas facom qualifies professionals for work with integrated communication. This means graduates may work in advertising agencies or in other companies (as marketing professionals), producing Web sites, video, and sound, or in the sales departments of media vehicles or agencies specializing in promotion, direct marketing, cultural marketing, or graphic design.

Pursuing FAAP's philosophy of developing enterprise, students train on business-tobusiness campaigns to gain experience of creating, managing, and publicizing an agency pitched at businesses in different sectors. The course also has a special focus on social campaigns, and has obtained practical results with initiatives such as donation of organs, adoption, and 'São Paulo Against Violence' - campaigns students have worked on very creatively and competently.

Professors encourage and prepare students to take part in university competitions, since this is increasingly an extremely competitive market. This investment has already had an effect in many different ways, including students from FAAP winning an award (the Estadão Media award) for three straight years and presenting work at conventions internationally. Success has been repeated with other awards, such as the Photography Exhibition staged in partnership with National Geographic Channel; Apple Creativity Award; and tv Globo's Project Solutions.

Other partnerships for excellence include one with the Association of Advertising Professionals (locally app) to hold the University Advertising Festival (locally Fest-up) for students from all over Brazil, which has been held at FAAP for the last fifteen years.

PUBLIC RELATIONS

The aim of the Public Relations course is to qualify students for overall management of a company's communication processes. Wagering at all times on entrepreneurial skills (based on a vision that is humanistic and strategic at the same time), this course provides practical experience of three different focuses in the market: business; product development; and social action.

The Public Relations qualification enables students to develop essential skills ranging from surveying and diagnosing relations between organizations and their different publics through to implementing programs and instruments for ensuring that this interaction takes place successfully, and covering several other more specific issues.

By allowing students to exercise the same responsibility that a manager of communication shoulders, and by placing them in the role of agents of their own education, the Institution designed an innovative process of reflection on its program "Appreciative Dialogues - Annual Convention." At this event, students get a chance to discuss with colleagues, professors, and representatives from associations representing industry professionals. FAAP holds its Public Relations Enterprise Meetings every semester too.

Reflecting high quality teaching, students' final-year dissertations and experimental projects have obtained recognition from media professionals as well as awards at the annual competition of the Brazilian Public Relations Association (locally abrp), which sets standards for the academic production of media studies schools in Brazil. FAAP students have been among the leaders in the different categories for many years.

RADIO AND TELEVISION

The Radio and Television course trained the first professionals who helped build the history of these media in Brazil - and they built the School's reputation for credibility and creativity too.

The infrastructure used to develop content producers (program directors, executive producers, authors, scriptwriters) is constantly being updated and is seen as a model for the sector. There are three tv and four radio studios; latest generation digital equipment for linear and nonlinear audio and video postproduction; editing room; technical laboratories; outside broadcasting cameras; and two corporate broadcasting stations, one radio and one tv, transmitting by Internet and closed circuit on campus. Programs are produced by teachers and students with support from technicians - this interaction helps to train professionals. For their final-year projects, in accordance with the idea of integrated communication, students design full planning schedules for radio and tv stations, including programs of different genres and formats. Work on budgeting and planning technical structure also provides experience of the various jobs involved in media businesses.

FILM

Having emerged from "free" or nondegree courses in the 1950s and 60s, the Film Studies program was structured as a degree course in 1976 and now produces professionals qualified to exploit different audiovisual languages. Graduates are recognized in the market for their ability to do commercial work as well as experimental, documentary, or fictional films of the auteur type. The course also has an archive and a team of professionals that make it a top center of Film Studies and a leader of the drive to re-energize Brazilian cinema. Many of Brazil's top young directors graduated from FAAP's Cinema course, including Mara Mourão, Manoel Paiva, Flávio Del Carlo, Laís Bodansky, and Beto Brandt.

Every semester, students use an average forty cans of film - 400 minutes of virgin film, enough to make a full-length film. Facilities include modern Aaton and Arriflex sr3 cameras fully equipped with video assist; a dolly with thirty meters of rails; and Avid and Protools consoles for nonlinear image and sound editing. The course has two viewing theaters with 16-mm and 35-mm projectors for students to watch important films by major directors.

Short films made by students and produced by facom have earned awards at several festivals, such as the International Short Films Exhibitions in São Paulo and Rio, the Brazilian Festival of University Cinema in Rio, the Festival of Brasília, and the Gramado Festival (where facom students won all awards for 16-mm short films and the Jury Special Award in 2005).

With the aim of keeping the course in touch with the Brazilian film scene, FAAP partners and hosts the most important events in Brazil, among which: the São Paulo International Film Exhibition, with a marathon of free screenings open to the public showing films from all over the world; the International Short Film Exhibition, with a panorama of new work from all over the world; Festival Mix Brasil and Goethe Institut, with a workshop on German Expressionism; and the International Animation Festival of Brazil - Anima Mundi. Aiming to stimulate in-depth discussion with students and professors, providing first-hand contact with market reality, the School always seeks to have film directors and/or producers present when their work is shown. The following visitors have been at the School for debates or have been involved in workshops or publications over the last few years: Manoel de Oliveira, born in Portugal, in 1908, who has the longest record in the industry as a filmmaker; Anselmo Duarte, the only Brazilian director to have won a Gold Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, who earned a retrospective in 2005 and a tribute to his sixty-year-long career; Amos Gitai and Abbas Kiarostami, with a retrospective, book release, photographic exhibition, and film workshop; Danis Tanovic and Cedomir Kolar, Academy Award winners, holding workshops on Production and Directing, also screened L'Enfer, not yet shown in Brazil; Fernando Meirelles, with a pre-première screening of City of God; Christian Berger; João Batista de Andrade; João Moreira Salles, Suzana Amaral, Tizuka Yamasaki; Jayme Monjardim; Daniel Burman; Evaldo Morcazel; Marcelo Masagão; Laís Bodansky, and many more. In 2004, FAAP held the 1st Latin-American Panorama of University Cinema, a biennial meeting for students from Latin-American film and audiovisual schools. The week's sessions covered curriculum issues and exchanges of academic experiences, and films made by students were extensively discussed, debated, and highlighted on screen. Those involved in the event included filmmakers, professors, and critics such as Carlos Reichenbach, Dolly Pussi, Francisco César Filho, Leon Cakoff, and Maria Dora Mourão.

VALUABLE FILM ARCHIVE

FAAP's film library, video archive, and photo collection is larger and more comprehensive than any other in Brazilian educational institutions, with numerous scripts available for research purposes. It was built up with the assistance of critics and historians such as Ademar Carvalhaes and Máximo Barro, and now has some 1,800 Brazilian and international posters; some 900 pieces, excerpts or complete works, in film; 1,300 pieces in video and dvd; and over 6,000 stills (scene photos). The importance of this material may be seen in the fact that the film collection includes 80 percent of Akira Kurosawa's oeuvre, all the Vera Cruz and Maristela production from the 1950s, Mack Sennett's comedies, thirty-three Charles Chaplin, ten Buster Keaton, and eight Harold Lloyd films. There are also classics such as the two versions of David Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (the original and one he edited for the New York Film Library); Erich von Stroheim's Greed; Fritz Lang's M and Metropolis; Orson Welles' Citizen Kane; and Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. There are also rare films by Thomas Edison, Georges Méliès (the famous A Trip to the Moon), and the Lumière brothers; and Os óculos do vovô (1913), which is believed to be the first Brazilian film ever made. There are curiosities such as Roman Polanski's student film Two Men and a Wardrobe; Noel Rosa's only appearance in a motion picture (a documentary film on the Bando de Tangarás group, the only known copy of which belongs to the film library). Items from this extensive collection of educational material for professors and historical research have also been loaned for exhibitions at venues such as São Paulo's Museu da Imagem e do Som, Centro Cultural São Paulo, Sesc Pompéia (São Paulo), and Rio de Janeiro's Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil.

CULTURAL REVIEW

The School has published its review facom since 1994 in order to encourage and publicize research work by professors. It has a Brazilian Library isbn and is one of the most highly respected academic publications in this field, being seen as part of Brazilian culture. Articles are written by professors from all courses at the School of Communication, but there are also pieces from outside essayists, critics, writers, and directors describing the processes of creation and criticism, the present and future of advertising, cultural policy strategies, and even environmental conservation.