For the autumn semester 2023-2024 I was taking part in the Erasmus+ mobility programme, studying Cinema Studies at the Lusófona University in Lisbon, Portugal. 

First, I would like to note, that it was my first time in Portugal, so the country with its culture and people was something completely new for me to experience! It wasn’t my first exchange semester abroad, but I was still really curious about the level of education in another country, willing to obtain some new skills and experience in film making and making new connections in the European world of cinema. And here I’d like to state that Lusofona University was a perfect place for me to push my horizons and get a lot of new knowledge about both filmmaking and a new culture. 

In this review I would like to share my experience in detail to help other students who are willing to go to this University to make their mobility period in Lisbon as smooth and good as possible. Later in this text I will write about my path in chronological order of me preparing and living through my Erasmus+ semester, in order to make a brief guide for the people interested in Lusofona University exchange programme.

• Looking for accommodation
  The first step for me after receiving the confirmation from Lusofona was finding a place to stay for 5 months of my exchange. This period was one of the most stressful times of my mobility, as I heard a lot of information that it is almost impossible to find a place in Lisbon for an acceptable price that would fit all the requirements for a student.
  My goal was to find an overall cheaper room somewhere both next to the center of the city and the university (which is located next to Campo Grade metro station). I started looking for a place 2.5 months in advance on both Facebook marketplace and Idealista website (the one that has the most options for the apartments in Lisbon). That wasn’t successful as all the landlords wanted the tenant to move in as soon as possible, and not 2 months after making the agreement, and the competition for the apartments is quite high, moreover they won’t rent you a place if you don’t come for a visit in advance, so it’s always great to have a friend in Lisbon who could schedule a visit and go see the apartment before you arrive to Lisbon. 
  Because of those reasons, I decided to stop the search and continue looking for the places at least 1 month in advance, but at the end it also didn’t really work, and I could only move in into my room after I arrived to Lisbon and went for a visit (I was lucky to have a friend to stay over for a day, and also getting the room right after the first visit).
  Another alert: it is almost impossible to find a room without mold on the walls or windows as the humidity level in Lisbon is really crazy, so everyone should be aware of this, especially the people with allergies or asthma. Also, most of the places don’t have heating inside, so it would be smart to buy an electric heater for the winter period as it can get quite cold in the period from November till April.
  
• Registration process
  When I arrived at Lisbon, I didn’t yet have my schedule or any information about the classes I was supposed to attend, so I recommend contacting the Erasmus+ coordinator in Lusofona in advance to get registered for all the courses in advance and not to spend a lot of time during the study period already with registering and changing the subjects. Moreover, the website of Lusofona doesn’t specify the language of the course, so there is a big possibility that the courses a student picks in advance will be only taught in Portuguese. That was the main reason I had to change almost all of my original subjects in the first month of studying here, as you won’t know the language of the course before you physically come to the class, so I had to change about 7 courses out of 5 I was supposed to pick, only one remained the same from the beginning.
  
• Cinema Department at Universidade Lusófona
  Talking about the experience of my studies in Lusofona, I would say that the university is perfect for the people who already are experienced in filmmaking and want to realize their own projects, using the equipment and professional support the professors give here. For me the biggest advantage of the school was the amount of professional equipment and special rooms they have. I had to chance to work with all kinds of Arri cameras (Arri Alexa LF, Arri Mini, professional REDs and Sony cameras), building up and operating dollies, operating the focus pull kit and so on. Moreover, we had lots of classes in the professional sound mixing room (all the sound classes each week) and color grading room (there we had a possibility to rent it almost every day to finalize the project). The film department has a lot of classes or special screenings in the cinema that is located on the campus territory and is quite large, bigger than lots of cinemas that I’ve been to in Lisbon. There we also had a possibility to check our projects to see in advance how it will look like on the projectors in other cinemas and listen to the sound as well. So I absolutely recommend this school for people interested in the practical part of filmmaking, such as cinematography, editing and sound design, as here you will have most of the tools to experiment and get the new skills and knowledge from. As for scriptwriters and directors, I am not sure it will be the best pick, as still most of the creative classes are held in Portuguese, or double language, but most of the people taking those courses (at least in my semester) were Portuguese students, so it was almost impossible for people who don’t speak Portuguese to follow those classes and make group exercises, so we decided to change the classes to more practical ones. 
  

• Communication with the professors and final grades
  Accordingly to my experience and the experience of most of my Erasmus+ colleagues, studying in Lusofona is not really easy and takes a lot of your free time. All the Erasmus students have the same amount of exercises and treatment from the professors, even though sometimes they are not experiences in the subject of matter as much as the other students on the programme, so it’s unreasonable to expect some special treatment. I had both an excellent and very bad experience with different professors during my mobility period, but overall I might say that it is very important to get to know in advance all the requirements for the final assignments, as the rules of writing, for example, depends a lot on the professor, and most of the time (especially if you take 2^nd or 3^rd year classes) they don’t specify it in front of the class, as all the Portuguese students already know about it. So it’s very important to clarify everything before getting a negative feedback or be sent to the exam. But at the same time I had a very nice color grading professor that I would like to mention here (Danilo Miranda Cares), that first of all started giving us all the classes in English as soon as he got to know that there are international students at the class, and second of all was helping and supporting all the Erasmus+ students for the period of the whole semester. He also helped me and my production crew to make a short film from the scratch and helped us throughout the way. I also really recommend to take the cinematography and color grading classes with this professor as thank to him I really obtained enough knowledge to operate DaVinci color grading mode and was able to grade a film all by myself, as well as gained a lot of knowledge of different cameras specifications and the ways of composing light for a cinematic image. 
  For the bad experience I wouldn’t like to mention the names of the professors I didn’t really enjoy the way of teaching, but according to my personal experience there was nothing really bad that could influence my final perception of the faculty, as I was prepared for more demanding or a bit rude professors, but a lot of other Erasmus+ students had bigger problems with some of the professors at the school.
  The grading system is also different, and there is a very little chance that a student will get more than 18 (out of 20) for any subject – for all of my classes the highest grade the whole group got was 18 and about 5% of the whole group got a grade of 16 or higher for all the courses I attended. So here I would also note that the professors in Lusofona (and as I heard Portugal in general) are not really generous with giving good grades to the students – only if you do some extraordinary work throughout the semester you will get 18 or higher. 
  

• Out of University activities
  It was a very pleasant surprise to get to know that Lusofona University hosts the course of surfing for all the levels, and gives quite a big discount for Erasmus+ people interested in it. I was attending the course for the beginners, that costs 50 euro for 5-6 classes during the second part of the 1^st semester. The course itself was organized perfectly, for most of the classes we had a personal instructor that gave us a lot of recommendations at the end as well. This course I recommend to everyone coming to Lusofona and interested in surfing, that was for sure quite a big highlight of the whole mobility period.
  There are also a lot of other activities Erasmus+ people can participate in, that are getting introduced to all the incoming students at the beginning of the semester.
  Moreover, Lisbon is a very alive, modern city, where you can find anything you want to do, including sport activities, libraries, night life and so on. It has amazingly large amount of all the different cuisines presented in the city, so you can find anything that fits your interest. 
  Also it is very easy and cheap to travel throughout Portugal, you can always find tickets to Porto, Coimbra or Faro for less than 5 euros one way, if you buy it in advance, plus you can visit Madrid or any other Spanish cities with either plane or FlixBus and sometimes the whole trip costs you less than 20 euros.
  

• Transportation around the city
  Lisbon has quite large transportation infrastructure and it is very easy to commute around the city. The first thing to do upon the arrival is to go to a bigger metro station (for example Cais do Sodre or Marques de Pombal) and apply for a transport card (before you would need to print or take an application form from the stuff of Metropolitan and print your profile picture). The lines of waiting for the applications are always crazy, I think I spent around 3 hours in the queue to apply, but it is definitely worth it, as with the card everyone gets a fixed priced monthly pass option, that without any discounts costs 40 euros for Lisbon Metropolitan area (that covers basically everything you will ever need to commute in Lisbon and around it). Moreover, people under 23 can apply for a discount, and from the year 2024 it is completely free for people under 23 to use this pass. The only thing needed for it is to prove that you are a student at a Lisbon University, and this document can be issued on the NetPa website that is used for all the records of students in Lusofona and Lisbon. 

To sum it up, I would like to say that overall my experience on this Erasmus+ exchange was amazing and I enjoyed every bit of it. I am really grateful for the opportunity that was given to me and I can for sure say that I gained plenty of new skills and assembled some connections that can be very profitable for me in the future and the mobility programme exceeded my expectations. Despite all the difficulties that could be met with a different system in another university/city, especially a bigger city like Lisbon and a bigger school like Lusófona, I for sure recommend taking a chance of studying abroad and encourage people who are thinking of a semester in Lisbon to come here and try it themselves!

Hello! My name is Una – I am a graduate of the Bachelor´s program in Digital Arts and Practices at the School of Arts of the University of Nova Gorica. During my last (absolvent) year of studies (2022/2023), I participated in an Erasmus+ traineeship at the cross-border organization in the field of film and audiovisual media – Kinoatelje. It combines event and publishing activities, research and collection, video and film production.

I was introduced to Kinoatelje during my studies as a film student at the University. Their events often highlighted the works of young artists, which was quite appealing to me and my colleagues. I was always interested in event organization, especially for artistic events with educational and cultural purposes targeted towards my age group. This is how I began collaborating with Kinoatelje, which resulted in my traineeship. During the exchange, I took many roles upon myself – my favorite ones being promotion (where I was able to use my knowledge from the School of Arts in the fields of photography and graphic design), as well as working as a consultant and youth representative (where my “young student” perspective was quite appreciated). Personally, my favorite experiences came from the organization of Tribute to a Vision (Poklon viziji) cross-border festival which took place in both Slovenia and Italy, highlighting artists from various regions, as well as it´s “daughter” festival – First Crossings (Prvi poleti), which focuses primarily on young artists. I worked on both the 2022 and the 2023 editions of the two festivals, during which I had the opportunity to meet various people from the fields of film, animation, music, production and promotion. Personally, this was the best part of my exchange, since many new collaborations and friendships arose from these contacts, which I value dearly. I was fortunate enough to have amazing mentors, who helped me throughout the process. I was able to advance my language skills in both English and Italian, which proved as quite useful!

Overall, the experience was great and I am happy to say that my collaboration with Kinoatelje will certainly continue in the future.

First Crossings 2023, Kinoatelje archive

Letni kino Silvana Furlana 2023, Kinoatelje archive

First Crossings 2022, photos by Una Savić

I spent the last two weeks at CreteLing Summer School and I recommend it to everyone.
The teachers are prepared and ready to answer any questions, both during lessons and in their free time. Students can present posters of their work and two very interesting workshops with internationally renowned professors are planned. Furthermore, the Summer School organizes evenings with games for students and dinners to spend an evening in the company of students and/or teachers.

Rethymno is a beautiful seaside town. There you can eat excellent Greek food and you can spend your free time at the beach or walk through the vibrant streets of the city.

Overall, I wholeheartedly recommend this experience. Erasmus + has made my wish come true.

Pripravništvo v Bruslju v smeri grafičnega oblikovanja

Letos sem sedem mesecev preživela pri odlični svetovalni agenciji v Bruslju, kjer so me mentorirali v načelih dizajna, ki se osredotoča na komunikacije, še posebaj preko družbenih omrežij. Kot študentka animacije, na akademiji umetnosti, sem v tem času lahko globoko utemeljila svoje znanje adobe programov in tega tudi močno nadgradila. Naugila sem se novih načel oblikovanja, bila mi je predstavljena nora novva tehnologija in ves čas sem imela tudi možnost dela v pisarni (s čudoitim razgledom na mesto) ali pa od doma. Ekipa je bila zelo odprta in prijazna, pomoč sem dobila tudi ob najbolj nespametnih vprašanjih.

Mesto kot samo mi je super. Je dom techno glasbe in pa stripov, kar se po ulicah tudi kaže, saj so bolj ‘umetniške’ (in pa malce umazane), a so tudi polne čudovite energije in pustolovskega duha. Vreme je kdaj slabo, ampak pomladi, ko končno zasije sonce se lokali in parki napolnijo z ogromno obrazi polnimi nasmeškov.

Zame je bila izkušnja super, ne le, da sem lahko s pripravništvom dobila ogromno novega znanja, ki mi bo zagotovo močno pomagalo pri iskanju zaposlite, ampak sem lahko tudi živela v elikem evropskem mestu, ki je poln skritih kotičkov, presenečenj in kjer je vedno, vedno, vedno kaj za početi.

From the 26th until the 30th of July we were a part of a summer school programme at ERAM University school in Girona, Spain – Staging in public spaces. Since acting isn’t really our primary interest, we were all curious and maybe a bit anxious to see how the workshop would unfold. We were placed in a group of thirty people or so, so one might think that it would be difficult for all of us to get along, let alone connect. But Carla, our mentor, made sure to hit the nail right on the head since day one of the workshop, so all of us felt comfortable to create and express right away.

Everyday was a complete new experience. We started of with telling a bit about ourselves but then straight away jumeped to excercises. Most of the first day we spent inside, exploring movements and seing how we can move together as a group. Sometimes it felt like dancing but sometimes just like a strong bond with the group that was established really quickly. We finished off the day with the game of hide and seek outside the school but to stay on topic, anyone who was found had to join the seeker and they had to move as a group, without words. The movements of the bodies were the tool for comunication on where to go next.

Second day came as a bit of a shock to all of us. We woke up in the morning and left for Barcelona. What we thought will be more of a turistic day in a big city was all of a sudden a public performance. We walked to a view point and started doing simmilar excercises as the day before. A street musician found his spot right next to us and we were encouraged by our mentor to respond to our surroundings which now also included the music. The more excercises we did, more people started observing a big group of young people doing weird stuff. When we already thought we finished, we moved to a more crowded space and had to, as a group, interact with our new found public. It felt like we are on a playground and it wasn’t a big problem to do bunch of stuff in front of complete strangers because you knew there is 30 more people there with you doing exactly the same thing.

It would probably be an even better feeling if Barcelona day happened a bit later in the week so the group would really be connected as we were at the end of the workshop. After that we got the rest of the day to roam free around Barcelona but had to do a short video for whitch we got 3 words that somehow needed to be shown in the clip. We formed smaller groups, did the excercise and got the opportunity to get to know the people in the group a bit better. The next day we watched all the videos from all groups and really saw the creativity of everyone participating in the workshop.

The rest of the workshop we were exploring more exercises that would make us closer as a group, plus finding out new ways of expressing ourselves with just gestures or movements instead of the words. For the last two days we were mostly preparing for the final performance, for which we first divided into smaller groups (5-6 people). All of the groups were supposed to choose a place around ERAM building and try to incorporate some interesting performance idea into the space and the surrounding environment. All four of us were in different groups, so we had different experiences of preparations and performing, as all of the teams chose a completely different subject and way to build up their own performance.

The last day was dedicated completely to performances, each group was performing for all the other people from the workshop, we made the plan with the convenient order of groups so we would be able to see everything and had enough time to prepare for each performance. At the end we all shared our experience with the group and the mentor, from our point of view the whole workshop was an extremely interesting and moving experience to go out from your comfort zone and explore yourself with the way we don’t usually do it. We are really thankful for all the organisers of the workshop for such an experience and appreciate our chances of joining this kind of a project.

Arta Kroni, Ana Logar, Tamara Kirina, Milena Brkić