One of the greatest news of the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival 7th edition is the very first edition of the International Music Video Competition, an experimental contest addressed only to music videos made by students from universities and schools of cinema from all over the world. Its aim is to pay homage to those young directors pledging their art to music. Giovanni Bedeschi, the curator of the competition, nominated a jury composed by experts to select six finalist videos. The winner was announced during the special program dedicated to this competition: Jacinthe Folon, the Belgian author of Melancholy – Ta Tristesse. She shows in an original way how emotions, words and the natural element of water can illustrate even the most complex plot and feelings, just like sadness. The explanation for awarding the prize-giving is the following:
“A music video which its animation differentiates from the others. Extremely refined, both in its storyline and drawings, which well match with the work’s elegance. Since, by definition, a music video has to effectively represent its music in the first place, the choice of an animation is perfect.”
The winner will be awarded with a special presentation of her video and with an interview made by the Festival media partner Good Short Film. Amongst the finalists, Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival also presented the German Lisa Zielke’s Guaia Guaia (Clean Up), which is about a white conservative family who must ask for shelter to a black one, after having been thrown out of their own house by some monsters. If at first these two families find themselves against each other, they finally fight the monster together. Ella Sadeql, filmmaker who has witnessed the war in Iran and firmly objects to gender discriminations and to Middle Eastern laws against women and children, aims to increase people’s awareness about such topics through Voice I Am. On the contrary, Olympia, created by the Italians Chiara Missaggia and Valentina Zanrosso (the so-called Ampersand Duo), is the metaphor of a personal challenge depicted through a fencing match, known for its strict, as well as determined, rules. The graceful moves should match with the thoughts, thus making clear the message that the author wishes to convey: balance between rationality and irrationality is fundamental. Anatol Schuster’s Crossing the Bridge (Germany) is a love song which shows this feeling as something unreachable. The video tells the story of a girl who drowns in a lake, while her goodbye to the world intertwines to a dancer’s moves. Finally, Reanimation (Dürerstuben) has as main character a funny dancing robot who takes back to life some young boys, dressed in glitters and strobe lights, straight from 70s discos. The director Marcus Hanisch graduated as a digital media designer and has experience in several internships and film sets.
