10/4/17 · Institutional

The UOC and the Sitges Festival create a master's degree in fantasy film

Photo: Jakob Owens / Unsplash (CC)

Photo: Jakob Owens / Unsplash (CC)

One of the driving forces behind today's audiovisual sector is fantasy film. Many of the films linked to the genre form part of the collective cultural imagination. These films also have a huge turnover. Avatar made $2.788 billion worldwide, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a little over $2.068 billion, and Jurassic World, around $1.7 billion. As well as a good script, experts stress that the key to success is constant innovation in the genre and the ability of professionals to generate new ideas and projects. This is the main reason for creating the Master's Degree in Contemporary Fiction and Fantasy Film launched jointly by the UOC and the Sitges Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya.

For Jordi Sánchez-Navarro, director of the UOC Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences and this new master's degree, it is essential that professionals are constantly recycling and reinventing to create films that “surprise, scare, thrill and excite” viewers. They must also be able to write good scripts and design the pre-production of a film project. He also says that they must have a good knowledge of the market of this genre and be able to detect alternative ways of screening films.  

The master's degree was therefore created to train professionals in how to "analyse and develop audiovisual projects in the fantasy genre and other contemporary fiction genres", explains Daniel Aranda, academic co-director of this university degree.

The master's degree is aimed at professional profiles in audiovisual media and audiovisual communication, and cinema graduates and graduates from related degrees who want to develop a professional career in the analysis, management, development and sales of film and television genre projects. 


Faculty linked to the Sitges Festival

The master's degree is run by Professor Jordi Sánchez-Navarro, who is the former deputy director of the Sitges Festival (2001-2004) and who has collaborated as a programmer for the Anima't section since 2005. The executive co-director is Mònica Garcia Massagué, deputy director of the Festival Foundation. The teaching team includes Àngel Sala, director of the Sitges Festival, and Mike Hostench, who is its deputy director, along with other names linked to the event.

The UOC views this joint initiative as a great opportunity to offer top-flight film and creativity training as the Sitges Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya is one of Europe's leading film festivals and has “definite international prestige,” says Sánchez-Navarro. It has been accredited by the FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers' Associations) and Hollywood's Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has designated it a qualified festival for its Oscars.

Press contact

You may also be interested in…

Most popular

See more on Institutional