Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography

Stand still for a moment and listen. Somewhere close by, a door swings open and a group of students spills out, arguing. The words drift past you: a shot that ran too long, a cut that came too early, an actor who did not look at the lens. This is a normal sound outside this building. People here have argued about cinema like this for more than a hundred years.

You are standing at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography. Most people in Moscow know it by its four-letter Russian abbreviation, VGIK, pronounced 'vgeek'. It began in 1919, and it is widely described as the oldest film school in the world. At that time, cinema itself was barely a generation old. Russia was in the middle of a civil war, and the idea of a state school for moving pictures was a bold bet on the future.

Think about what that meant in practice. In those first years, the country had very little of anything, and that included raw film stock. Film was scarce and precious. So the early teachers had to train students to make films with almost no film at all. That shortage shaped the school in a way that still shows in how it teaches today.

One of those teachers was Lev Kuleshov. His workshop became famous for exercises that students staged and rehearsed like real scenes, often without any camera running. Kuleshov is best remembered for an idea that every film student still learns. The idea is that the meaning of a shot depends on the shots around it. Put the same face next to a bowl of soup, a coffin, or a child at play, and audiences read three different emotions into it. Film scholars call this the Kuleshov effect. It is one of the quiet foundations of modern editing.

Here is the first thing many visitors miss. The famous director Sergei Eisenstein, who made Battleship Potemkin, also taught at this institute. Battleship Potemkin is the silent film with the well-known scene of a baby carriage on a long flight of stone steps. Eisenstein thought about cinema almost like a scientist. He built theories of how images collide, and he passed those ideas to students in these classrooms. So the editing tricks you see in action films and music videos today trace part of their family tree to lessons given here.

The name on the building honours Sergei Gerasimov. He was a Soviet director and actor, and he taught here for decades. He ran a workshop together with the actress Tamara Makarova, and the two trained many actors and directors. The institute took his name in the 1980s. For students, his name stands less for one film and more for a way of teaching. In that approach, a master leads a small group of students through all the years of their training.

That workshop system is still the heart of the school. Students apply not only to a faculty, but to a particular master. Directors, cinematographers, screenwriters, actors, animators, producers and film scholars all train here. The cinematography students learn to light a face, and the sound students learn to record a quiet room. They often work together on the same short films, because a film needs every one of these skills at once.

Now look toward the entrance. In front of the building, three bronze young men sit together on steps. They are three of the school's best-known former students: the director Andrei Tarkovsky, the writer and director Vasily Shukshin, and the screenwriter Gennady Shpalikov. They look relaxed and unposed, like friends between classes. Students walk past them every day. It is a rare monument, because it shows these men as students, not as famous figures on a pedestal.

The list of graduates is long. Beyond those three, it includes Larisa Shepitko and Elem Klimov, a married couple who were both directors. Here is the second surprise, and it matters to many travellers from the Caucasus. A remarkable share of Georgian cinema passed through this school. Otar Iosseliani and Tengiz Abuladze studied here. So did Sergei Parajanov, who was born in Tbilisi. These directors later made films with a style that was clearly their own, full of humour, folk imagery and long, patient shots.

That detail says something about what this place really was. For much of the twentieth century, young people came here from across a huge territory. They came from Central Asia, the Baltic states, the Caucasus, and from other countries too. They learned the same grammar of film in the same classrooms. Then many went home and used that grammar to tell stories in their own languages, about their own villages and cities.

It also helps to know what this place is today, so you can set your expectations. This is a working university, not a museum. Its classrooms, sound stages and editing rooms belong to students and teachers in the middle of their work. Visitors usually see the institute from the outside, and that view still gives you a lot. You see the building, the bronze figures and the daily life of the school. You may also see a student crew carrying a tripod and a light stand toward the street.

The surrounding district is in the north-east of Moscow, close to the large exhibition grounds known as VDNKh and the city's botanical gardens. It feels calmer than the historic centre. The streets are wide, the trees are tall and the buildings are mostly Soviet-era blocks. After a visit, many people walk on toward the exhibition grounds or the gardens. Those green spaces are a good place to sit and think about what you just saw.

Before you leave, look once more at the faces of the people walking in and out. Some of them are carrying scripts, and some are carrying hard cases of equipment. Somewhere among them, perhaps, is a director whose first feature film you will watch years from now. Listen again for those voices on the steps, still arguing about the cut that came too early. That sound has filled this spot for more than a century, and it is still going on now.