It was in many ways a typical film-school scene. On a recent hot afternoon, a group of eager young students crowded around a big-time director, asking for advice about backlighting and the best way to establish a scene of anarchy.

But the students quizzing David O. Russell, the director of “Three Kings” and “I ♥ Huckabees,” weren’t enrolled at New York University or Columbia or any other august institution.

They were from the Ghetto Film School, an unaccredited training program in the South Bronx that operates in the summer and on weekends during the school year. It gives teenagers a rigorous introduction to filmmaking and, despite the humblest of origins, has built up an enviable roster of Hollywood donors and supporters inside city government. Since early July the school’s 19 students, ranging in age from 14 to 20, have been studying the likes of Antonioni and John Huston, running through camera exercises and working on six-minute films in two cramped classrooms in a city recreation center in Mott Haven, where the ceilings periodically thump with the sounds of the weight room directly overhead.

The school’s ambitions, however, reach far beyond the ghetto. Tonight the students’ work will be shown at Lincoln Center. And the school is opening a spacious annex near its original location, financed by a $1.2 million grant from the city. Ghetto Film is also working with the Department of Education to develop a cinema-themed high school that would join the elite ranks of specialized schools like the La Guardia High School for the arts.