 After struggling to find suitable premises, the first filmmaking course finally started in April 1957, based in rather modest locales above a grocer's shop in Electric Avenue, Brixton.The school was the first of its kind in the United Kingdom.Inspired by the emergence of film schools in Eastern Europe after World War II, it was set up around the belief that the future of the British film industry required properly designed formal training, rather than the apprenticeship basis which was, at the time, the only access into the field.