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Are you passionate about cinema and eager to dive deeper into its history? This intensive summer school in Antwerp gives you the chance to explore film history in an inspiring international environment. Over the course of seven days, you’ll combine screenings, lectures, and seminars while engaging with leading scholars, critics, and fellow students from around the world.

Each edition focuses on two key themes in film history: such as a director, actor, genre, movement, or historical moment, approached from multiple historical and theoretical perspectives. A true highlight of the programme is the chance to view and discuss rare archival films, screened in optimal cinema conditions.

Combining rigorous scholarship with an immersive cinematic experience, this programme offers approximately 20 screenings complemented by 10–15 lectures and interactive seminars. By the end of the week, you’ll have expanded your knowledge, sharpened your critical skills, and built valuable connections within the international film community. While the definitive schedule will be released in May, prospective applicants are encouraged to review the , , and programmes to consult examples of previous screenings and lecture topics.

In 2026, the main focus will be on Global Melodrama. From its earliest days, cinema has drawn on melodrama to heighten conflict, emotion, and suspense. Silent films used its gestures to tell stories without words, while the rise of the feature film relied on its patterns of crisis and resolution. Far from being a fixed genre, melodrama is a flexible, travelling mode that has shaped Hollywood and taken root across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Its global circulation shows how melodrama brings social and political tensions to life on an emotional level, producing some of the most influential and enduring works in cinema history. The keynote speaker will be Ben Singer (University of Wisconsin–Madison), author of the standard work Melodrama and Modernity.

The programme will explore melodrama from a range of historical, theoretical, and geographical perspectives. Sessions will address the global circulation of melodramatic forms, the conceptual challenges of defining melodrama and distinguishing its variables and variants, and the central role of emotion and pathos in melodramatic storytelling. Particular attention will also be given to regional traditions and transformations of the mode, with possible case studies focusing on Latin American, South Asian, East Asian, and Arabic melodrama. 

In the second programme strand, several internationally renowned film critics will explore and discuss the elusive qualities of Poetic Cinema – or the ‘cinema of poetry’, as Pier Paolo Pasolini proposed in 1965 – a cinema that, while still narrative, is built on mystery, mood, texture and sensuality, so-called impressionistic words that are notoriously hard to pinpoint. Possible case studies include the work of filmmakers such as Claire Denis, Raúl Ruiz, Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Boris Barnet. Keynote speakers will be the renowned film critics .  

Organised by the University of Antwerp, in collaboration with  (Flemish Service for Film Culture), and in partnership with  and , this summer school runs alongside  (ZomerFilmCollege), with which it partly overlaps.

Want to turn your summer into a longer learning journey? This programme can be paired with another summer school through Antwerp Summer University Combinations. Discover the possibilities!