Worth Magazine highlights Brooklyn College Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema

Dattner Architects’ Brooklyn College Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema represents New York in the second annual Destinations issue of Worth Magazine.

The Feirstein School opened its doors in the fall of 2015, becoming the first public graduate film school in New York. The school is praised for being the best of two worlds – a graduate school and professional film studio – due to its location within Steiner Studios,  a 580,000 square foot production lot where major films and TV shows are shot, including The Wolf of Wall Street and Boardwalk Empire.

Designed to embrace the culture of a contemporary movie lot and university campus, the new production facilities occupy the sixth floor and includes a sound stage, production labs, motion capture studio, and a screening room. Post-production labs, editing suites, and recording studios occupy most of the fifth floor.

“By any standard it is one of the best facilities I’ve ever walked inside of … I certainly never set foot in anything like that until I started working for studios.”
– Director Steven Soderbergh

Setting itself apart from other film schools, the Feirstein School has embraced diversity, with at least half of the school’s student population comprising of women and minorities. In doing so, the NYC Office of Media and Entertainment earmarked millions of dollars to be administered over five years to female film and theater makers to help them complete their projects. One of those projects will be a pair of TV pilots written by female screenwriters and produced by Feirstein students. Actor Ethan Hawke, who is also a member of the school’s advisory council, understands that “young people need to try out their skills when they’re not in the corporate world,” and feels they can do that at the Feirstein School.

Over 100 years after Brooklyn-based Vitagraph Company of America started producing as many as eight silent films per week, New York is still pushing the industry forward with creative, progressive ideas. Hollywood is no longer the only option for burgeoning filmmakers. We are proud to have designed a space that gives students the opportunity to create in a program that embraces Brooklyn’s diversity in a Hollywood-like setting.

*Photos by: Chris Cooper