E-Mail This Article to a Friend Directors’ cut Reality TV goes to Film School BY GERALD PEARY

Does "four graduate students struggle to make their thesis films" seem a juicy premise on which to build a reality-TV series? That indeed is the master narrative of Film School, whose 10 30-minutes episodes kick off this Friday, September 10, at 10:30 p.m. on the Independent Film Channel (IFC). We land at the legendary New York University Film School, which boasts Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, and Amy Heckerling among its distinguished alums, and we watch four students take on the daunting task of putting together a professional-level short film while juggling courses and personal lives.

Every cinema student knows how traumatic it is when, drowning in class projects, he or she alienates friends, lovers, and family. But will outsiders care about the issues of Film School and bother to stay tuned? The first couple of episodes are somewhat perfunctory, but that may be unavoidable: they get us inside NYU, educate us about the film program, and introduce us to the four budding film directors among the 100 NYU graduate students — editors, cinematographers, and others — who are all forging thesis projects.

Film School kicks in as you become familiar with the chosen four and as the filmmaking precipitates some genuine, and affecting, personal dramas. There are funny moments and sad ones; there’s some real tragedy, and best of all, some uproarious black comedy. Credit talented producer/director and NYU grad Nanette Burstein with taking it slowly (unusual in the hyperactive world of cable TV) to let her four tales evolve in the time-honored style of classic cinéma-vérité. (Burstein has co-directed two fine theatrically released documentaries, On the Ropes and The Kid Stays in the Picture.)

And the anointed quartet?

Vincenzo, 35, is a former opera director from Italy who has decided he must make movies. His film project: a sketch about an eccentric man who frightens women in the New York streets by thrusting a rubber spider into their hands.

Alrick, 28, Jamaican-born and Rasta-haired, is squeezing by at NYU while his beloved mother works in fast food during the day and in a supermarket at night. His project: the political film "Supernigger," which aims to re-create via farce the death of Amadou Diallo, a 22-year-old African immigrant, at the hands of the NYPD in 1999.

Leah, 24, is a punk-æsthete visual-artist Brown grad who includes blond wigs and black eyeliner among her conceptual guises. Her project: a therapeutic film that relives through drama her stressful relationship as a teenager with her wheelchair-bound mother, a victim of multiple sclerosis.

Barbara, 28, chunky and ungainly, is a timid and introverted woman from Texas who arrived at NYU after living two years on Long Island with her invalid grandmother. Her project: a blatantly autobiographical tale of a shy guy who takes in an escaped lab-experiment monkey and cherishes it more than he does human beings.

Make your movie!

Barbara says about NYU, "I have no idea how I got in at all." You may also wonder why this ordinary young woman was plucked for Film School — maybe to see the perennial ugly duckling make the best movie of all? That doesn’t happen. Self-loathing, Barbara lets the days pass because she has no actors for her movie, and certainly no monkey. Will she drop out of the NYU program?

Leah flies to Oakland, California, to decide whether to cast her own mother. You see much of her tough-girl East Coast confidence slip away when she goes up against her hard-edged mom, Toni, whom she hasn’t seen in three years. She decides to put her mother on camera, and from that moment, the film falters, as Leah herself becomes paralyzed by off-camera family drama.

Alrick, an amiable guy, struggles to finance his movie. A lovely fundraising dinner, for which his mother cooks Jamaican food, collects a paltry $1400. And he’s faced with a so-typical film problem: a prima donna DP who thinks the film is about his cinematography and therefore wastes money on the most expensive camera package and spends hours of shooting time on lighting the most pedestrian shot.

The best for last: the clear-thinking Vincenzo makes the most foolish hires, picking a stylish young woman, Jen, and her yuppie boyfriend, Parker, as executive producer and line producer. Share the hilarity as these two head to Hollywood in search of money: she, a dumber version of Jessica Simpson (really), he a blond, thick Fred Willard. Their big LA triumph: $20 in cash, straight from the wallet of Henry Winkler, the Fonz.