Call for application – Scholarship for the Sound Documentary Summer Programme in France

The Sound Documentary International Intensive Summer Programme is a training which has been created in 2021. It is aimed for young international professionals coming from all over the world. It is offered by the Ecole nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière (ENS Louis-Lumière) and designed with the support of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs and the complicity of Radio France Internationale (RFI).

As part of the 20th anniversary of the Longueur d’Ondes Festival in 2024, and due to the Olympic Games being held in Paris, the 2024 edition of the Programme will exceptionally be held in Brest (in Brittany, northwestern France) in partnership with the Festival Longueur d’Ondes and the Université de Bretagne Occidentale.

It will take place from July 12th to September 1st 2024 and it will welcome 14 young foreign audiovisual professionals.

All candidates should have an experience as authors (blog, podcast or creative project involving sound). The laureates are selected by a jury of French professionals in connection with the cultural services of the French embassies. The participants of the programme are laureates of a scholarship from the French embassies.

During 7 weeks of intensive training, all laureates dive into the radio ecosystem in France, a pioneer in the radio documentary genre. They learn the fundamentals of writing and recording a radio documentary, supervised by a documentary maker / soundscape artist and a sound engineer. They try out different sound-writing processes, they learn about the techniques of interviewing, capturing atmospheres, soundscape, stereophonic sound recording and audio editing. They learn how to present a project to professionals in the field (radio channels, etc.).

The programme is structured around 3 lines:

• Theoretical and practical training in sound writing (from design to editing)
• Production of a sound documentary in pairs (each twosome will conceive and carry out its project from A to Z during the programme)
• Discovery of the French radio / podcast creation initiatives in Brittany

Weeks 1, 2 and 3 will be dedicated to theoretical and practical training and meetings with professionals. Weeks 4 and 5 will be dedicated to recording. Week 6 will be dedicated to editing and week 7 to mixing.

The educational part of the programme is created and led by Fréédéérique Pressmann. She is a documentary filmmaker and sound artist who was born in Paris in 1966. She started her career in New York in the late 80s as a written press journalist, writing most notably for The Village Voice. Back in Paris in the 90s, she has worked as a radio producer, copy-edited in various newspapers and translated books from English into French. Starting in 2002, she began producing numerous soundscapes and radio documentaries, mainly for French public radio (France-Culture, Arte Radio), some of which have earned national awards. Since 2009, she has also been teaching documentary practice in schools and universities in France. She is the author of three feature-length documentary films.

The coordination of the programme is ensured by Pascaline Perretti, independant radio producer and cultural projects manager.

Participants will be accommodated in a Campus France residence in Brest.

ENS LOUIS-LUMIERE Founded in 1926, the École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière is a unique institution: it provides high-level training in image and sound professions and is an international leader in the fundamentals of these fields, the only one to deliver excellent training to become a cinematographer, sound engineer or photographer.

Please send your application before March 17, 2024 in 1 single PDF file: Application form, a 1-page cover letter, a 1-page synopsis and a CV to : culture-ifj@consulfrance-jerusalem.org

To download the application form, click here !