About

EFS Film School Courses

EFS Film School is an educational initiative devoted to personal, experimental, essayistic, and poetic cinema. Rooted in the philosophy and vision of its founder, Rouzbeh Rashidi, it approaches film not merely as technique or instruction, but as a medium of perception, inquiry, and artistic self-formation. Across its wider activities, EFS Film School has developed a distinctive pedagogical space in which film history, philosophical reflection, aesthetic experimentation, and the cultivation of an autonomous creative practice are brought into sustained relation. 

EFS Film School Courses was launched in 2026 as an offspring of EFS Film School and as a natural development of Rouzbeh Rashidi’s long-term teaching practice. It emerged in response to a simple but significant reality: many students, artists, filmmakers, and researchers cannot always attend physical courses, live online classes, or scheduled workshops because of work, study, geographical distance, or other responsibilities. The self-paced format arose, therefore, as a thoughtful response to those conditions and not as a departure from the school’s philosophy. It was created to make the philosophical, poetic, and aesthetic dimensions of EFS Film School’s pedagogy available to those who require flexibility, solitude, and time. 

This platform is dedicated specifically to self-paced, pre-recorded, independently guided online courses. In that respect, it is distinct from the main EFS Film School website, which continues to encompass on-site classes, live online courses, masterclasses, and broader pedagogical activity. EFS Film School Courses offers another rhythm of engagement with cinema: one in which reflection may unfold privately, revisitation remains possible, and artistic development can proceed with deliberation rather than haste. It is intended for those who wish to encounter filmmaking as a serious practice of thought, feeling, and form, but who need to do so on their own time and in their own space. 

Rouzbeh Rashidi is an Iranian-Irish experimental filmmaker and educator whose work has emerged from a sustained, laborious, and deeply independent practice in cinema. He founded the Experimental Film Society in Tehran in 2000, and EFS Film School has become his principal educational initiative since 2019. His films have screened internationally, while his teaching has introduced students and practitioners to a mode of cinema grounded in philosophy, poetic form, and radical personal expression. Within EFS Film School Courses, this substantial body of lived, artistic, and pedagogical experience is made available in a format designed for sustained, self-directed study.