Residential phase 15th-30th August 2025. At Bwlch Corog, Dyfi Watershed, Cymru.
Editing phase 16 hours each participant during September to November.
A PAID forest film course, favouring people restricted from accessing documentary filmmaking education.
The Ffilm School is an attempt to learn documentary filmmaking with methods fit for a just and flourishing future, with the wellbeing of future generations prioritised. FfS believes that ecological change means how we make films, how we tell stories, our methods, looks and sounds, also change. This course is for people who are politically engaged, believe that another world is possible, and want to be part of finding the way there.
Ffilm is Welsh film. English needs that F: for Future Film School, Forest Film School, Feral Film School.
FfS is a two-week residency in the woods, where we work and play and make together. At FfS we learn by making an ambitious film about how FfS is a ‘for fuck’s sake’ call to make films otherwise. Make it better.
Eight collaborators, two weeks, filmmaking together, learning together in the Dyfi Watershed from our camp on Bwlch Corog.
You’ll learn nonfiction filmmaking with high quality equipment, with experienced filmmakers, from idea generation to distribution, but with a questioning eye, ear and mind. What methods and ideas have we inherited which are not fit for the future?
FFS is trying to work in ways which are anti-extractivist; that is, FFS is trying to work in ways that oppose the assumptions of the cultures that have led us to climate change and biodiversity loss, the assumption that you can take without reciprocal obligations.
This course is for people with strong relations to the Dyfi, Rheidol, and Ystwyth watersheds. This is an inclusive understanding of relations. Refugees are most definitely welcome here.
FfS is for those disadvantaged by the world-as-it-is to offer their visions of the world-as-it-could-be.
We favour applications from those who don’t easily gain access to filmmaking education, particularly due to financial, class, and care-related barriers.
FfS is PAID to take part.
James Price (he/him) has conceived of and designed the FFilm School. James is a filmmaker-artist-scholar with BBC & Channel4 credits, and has been teaching filmmaking in HE since 2009. He is researching how nonfiction filmmaking education can be made fit for the future, between Aberystwyth and UWE Bristol. The FFilm School is part of this PhD research.
Laura Harrington (she/her) is a Cymraeg artist, researcher and organiser who works with film. Her work considers the complex relations between humans and landscapes, often working collaboratively on long-term co-productive practices with landscape. She works in uplands, peatlands and rivers, connecting what she calls an upstream consciousness to global currents.
Anne Marie Carty (she/her) is a Dyfi watershed, Welsh-speaking filmmaker, who since 1995 has been using locally-made film as triggers for community reflection, discussion and dialogue. Her PhD research explores community consultation and finding lower carbon filmmaking methods, trying to work carefully with both people and planet.
Chris Allen (he/him) is the founder of live-cinema pioneers the Light Surgeons. Since the 90s TLS have been creating groundbreaking audiovisual art and performances, innovating co-creational methods and rethinking what making documentary film can mean.
Altaea Fradley (she/her) is feeding the FFS. Altaea studied Ecology at Aberystwyth University, before developing a local & organic veg box scheme in the Aberystwyth & Dyfi Biosphere Reserve area.
place and accommodation
FfS is place-based. That place is the Dyfi, Rheidol and Ystwyth watersheds, the lands where rainfall might drain to the Irish Sea through these three rivers.
The course is residential, camping on the hillside of Bwlch Corog with Coetir Anian, the Cambrian Wildwood, and in the barn, Einion at Cefn Coch.
schedule
now sign up to our email list, whether you want to take part, or just keep up to date.
June apply to be a paid participant – we’re calling them ‘conspirators’.
July conspirators are selected
August 15th conspirators at Bwlch Corog for the FfS residential. Learning through making.
August 29th live cinema workshop using the material we’ve gathered, guided by the Light Surgeons’ Chris Allen, culminating in a performance, free and open to all.
August 30th Goodbye to the FfS residential.
Mid September first 3 weeks of editing – we’re calling it ‘braiding’. Each conspirator is paid for 16 hours over the 6 weeks.
October 3 more weeks of braiding.
November date TBC screening of the finely woven braid (our film) free and open to all.
Beyond that… we are ambitious, we want this film to have a life beyond the project, and intend submitting it to film festivals and finding other ways of distributing it.
food
Three meals a day, with ingredients sourced from regenerative and low-carbon local food providers. Plant-centred, but Altaea also offers low-impact, high-welfare animal products. Fully-vegan options always available.