Who We Are

The AFDA Way

The AFDA Goal

The AFDA Goal To develop a value-driven educational institution that contributes to transformative nation building and rewards all stakeholders by providing a relevant, stimulating, rigorous and globally integrated learning experience that empowers students with productive innovative skills, enabling graduates to grow sustainable creative economies.

Why AFDA?

AFDA utilizes a progressive, project-led research and learning approach. Our faculty is a strategic mix of active industry practitioners and seasoned academics, ensuring that students are always at the cutting edge of market trends.

The AFDA learning approach is characterised by:

• Stimulating Hybrid Learning: A modern blend of on-campus experiential training and digital academic engagement.
• 21st-Century Core Competencies: A curriculum designed to master creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and digital fluency, alongside personal value-setting and goal-driven leadership
• Cross-Disciplinary Expertise: Providing students with specialized and transferable skills in film, theatre, television, and business innovation, with a deep focus on understanding audience and market dynamics.
• Diverse Pedagogy: A teaching model that balances instructional, student-led, experiential, and explorative learning to cultivate versatile professionals.
• No Traditional Exams: In a move to mimic real-world industry practices, AFDA replaces sit-down examinations with Multiple Assessment Modes. Students are evaluated through audience response, market viability, industry expert reviews, and collaborative project outcomes.
• Elite Connectivity: Developing “industry-ready” graduates who emerge with a professional portfolio and immediate access to an elite network of over 8,500 alumni worldwide.

• • Offering students general and specialised skills in film, theatre, television and business innovation production and audience / market dynamics.
  • Utilising diverse teaching and learning experiences that include instructional, student-led, experiential, collaborative and explorative learning.
  • Rather than traditional sit-down examinations, AFDA incorporates multiple assessment modes which include audience / market, industry experts and collective-individual project and research assessment to suit different learning styles and mimic industry practices.
  • Developing industry-ready graduates who are skilled and connected to a pool of creatives.

Learning Methods

The AFDA Educational Promise

To provide students with the conceptual, perceptual and concrete skills that will enable them to originate meaningful narrative concepts and human behaviors that are relevant to target audiences, and to truthfully and accurately deliver these narratives through appropriate use of medium and aesthetic form and the employment of resources to accurately and economically produce and sell the completed production.

AFDA Educational Objectives

1.  To provide conceptual, perceptual and concrete skills that will enable students to originate meaningful narrative concepts and to            understand why these might be relevant and the impact they may have on target audiences and society in general.
2.  To understand why human behavior and culture are the agent through which narratives are embodied and made emotionally                  relevant to target audiences.
3.  To understand how their chosen medium of expression can be considered and used to truthfully and accurately produce their                  narrative.
4.   To understand how aesthetic elements might be used to establish and produce the appropriate form of the world in which the                narrative is set.
5.  To understand how to plan and employ resources to economically produce and sell a production to achieve return on investment.

What makes AFDA unique?

• AFDA offers a learning system that utilises a diverse number of learning strategies and methodologies which include tacit learning, learning by approximation, collaborative learning, scaffold learning and learning through socialisation.
• The AFDA learning and assessment system caters to what Howard Gardner refined to as ‘Multiple Intelligences’. These diverse intelligences are:
  • Visual-Spatial
  • Bodily-kinesthetic
  • Musical
  • Interpersonal
  • Intrapersonal
  • Linguistic
  • Logical –Mathematical
• The creative industries require diverse specialization (intelligences) that are able to collaborate in an economically viable manner to achieve high standards of production.
• AFDA students are given the opportunity to explore and discover their aptitude and by extension their career path.
• AFDA uses a learning system designed to deal with the opportunities and challenges of the knowledge economy and the future. It is a market related learning system focusing on the audience and the target market.
• We offer an outcomes-based learning system which requires a hands-on approach, focusing on leadership, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. This mimics the industry and takes place in an authentic learning environment.
• AFDA focuses on the goals of the learner.
• AFDA students do not write traditional exams. Students are assessed on a individual basis and team/group focused research. An application of theory and research in the creation and exhibition of entertainment content or in development and monetisation of entrepreneurial business and disruptive technologies is what primarily constitutes assessment at AFDA.
• AFDA’s learning process is highly effective and creates a network of skilled graduates who are able to forge careers in the entertainment, media and other creative industries.

Equipment & Facilities

AFDA was founded in 1994 by Garth Holmes, Bata Passchier and Deon Opperman

From its early beginnings of 6 students, a rented VCR and broken TV, AFDA has over the last 30 years established itself as one of the leading institutions of its kind in the world today. AFDA now has over 2700 students, a permanent staff of over 260 academics and administrators and 4 fully equipped campuses in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Gqeberha.

AFDA has produced some of the top filmmakers and actors in South Africa today and has made a significant contribution to developing a sustainable local entertainment industry, as well as receiving international acclaim and recognition. Notably, AFDA is the only South African winner of the Student Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Foreign Student Film “Elalini” in 2006. In 2020, an AFDA alumnus worked as the colourist on the Oscar-winning documentary “My Octopus Teacher”. And in 2021, AFDA staff, students and alumni played a key role in the making of the Student Academy Award winning film “Lakutshon’ IIanga”.

AFDA is an internationally recognized institution and a proud full member of CILECT – The International Association of Film and Television Schools. AFDA’s membership to CILECT gives AFDA students and alumni the opportunity to continue or further
their studies at any of the 180+ CILECT member film schools around the world. These include: UCLA (Los Angeles), TISCH (New York), Columbia, (Chicago), La Femis (Paris), London Film School (London), Chapman University (California) and the Beijing Film Academy (Beijing), to name but a few.

History

From its early beginnings of 6 students, a rented VCR and broken TV, AFDA has over the last 30 years established itself as one of the leading institutions of its kind in the world today. AFDA now has over 2700 students, a permanent staff of over 280 academics and administrators and 5 fully equipped campuses in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Gqeberha and Hatfield, Pretoria. The AFDA Alumni Community now boasts a powerhouse of over 8500 alumni.

AFDA has produced some of the top filmmakers and actors in South Africa today and has made a significant contribution to developing a sustainable local entertainment industry, as well as receiving international acclaim and recognition. Notably, AFDA is the only South African winner of the Student Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Foreign Student Film “Elalini” in 2006. In 2020, an AFDA alumnus worked as the colourist on the Oscar-winning documentary “My Octopus Teacher”. And in 2021, AFDA staff, students and alumni played a key role in the making of the Student Academy Award winning film “Lakutshon’ IIanga”.

AFDA is an internationally recognized institution and a proud full member of CILECT – The International Association of Film and Television Schools. AFDA’s membership to CILECT gives AFDA students and alumni the opportunity to continue or further
their studies at any of the 180+ CILECT member film schools around the world. These include UCLA (Los Angeles), TISCH (New York), Columbia, (Chicago), La Femis (Paris), London Film School (London), Chapman University (California) and the Beijing Film Academy (Beijing), to name but a few.