The Francesco Pasinetti Festival, now at its 20th edition, has become a meeting point for young people, amateurs and film professionals, and one of its objectives is to promote film productions, including independent and experimental ones, in Venice.
The Pasinetti Festival, presided over by Anna Ponti and curated by Michela Nardin, Giovanni Andrea Martini, Marco Paladini and Isabella Albano, intends to pay particular attention to short films that deal with social, cultural and environmental issues and to the documentary genre, especially the works related to the city of Venice.
The Festival is tightly linked with high schools, in particular with the Artistic High School Michelangelo Guggenheim, with a bond right from the beginning when the school was still called Istituto Statale d’Arte di Venezia.
The competition is always focused on the city, recounting its life and traditions, but at the same time aware of the present and interested in the city’s future prospects. Also for this year’s edition, the Festival will be held in different parts of the city: the Casa del Cinema, Il Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the Film Festival area housed at the Regione Veneto premises, and in Cibiana of Cadore (Dolomites), a place rich in history and charm, which will host, thanks to the mayor Mattia Gosetti, an evening dedicated to Pasinetti’s mountain cinema.
“Are they stones or are they clouds?”: this quote by Dino Buzzati is the title of the section. The theme is the landscape, architecture and stories of the Pale Mountains, the Dolomites. The jury of the award is chaired by film critic Carlo Montanaro, and includes other experts in the field and personalities connected to the city’s cultural background .
Venice is the theme of a special prize of the ‘Whole Town Together!’ Association, which sums up the underlying theme of all the sections: the right to live in welcoming realities, in which dialogue is a precious instrument of knowledge, in which diversity is richness, in which cordial coexistence is the basis of relationships between people.
Special thanks to Daniela Manzolli, who oversaw the selection of the videos to be presented at the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival and has directed the last few years of the Festival with passion and dedication.
The regulations of the 20th edition can be found at www.festivalpasinetti.il
Giovanni Andrea Martini
VideoContest ‘Francesco Pasinetti’ selection, 19th edition
Premio Tema libero – Free Theme Prize
Cromosoma X – Chromosome X (9’01”)
Director: Lucia Bulgheroni
During a break, Rich comments on a colleague’s photos making macho jokes and innuendo. A pink smoke bomb comes in through the window and hits him, causing him to fall into a deep, hellish dream. The short film unashamedly exposes a sensitive topic through an original visual rendering, specifically in its ability to sensitise the viewer by using everyday settings that take shape through elaborate stop-motion of great technical skill.
Documentario e Documentazione indipendenti – Independent Documentary and Documentation
Il suono immobile – The Still Sound (4’07”)
Director: Camilla Ferrari
The Still Sound narrates, with extraordinary skill, the spaces of the city of Rovigo through a very personal point of view made up of significant visual and sound details, both in content and aesthetics. The video was awarded for its excellent expressive choice of letting the city speak through the authentic sounds it produces, and thus for the excellent exploitation of the territory and its treasures.
Diversità come valore indipendente – Diversity as an independent value
Claudio (2’25”)
Director: Emilio Fantin
The video is taken from The Light of Darkness, an installation of 7 monitors each containing a portrait of people with coma outcomes. In collaboration with the Associazione Gli Amici di Luca della Casa dei Risvegli, Bellaria Hospital, 2021. Claudio Calabrò dialogues with Alessandro Bergonzoni. Emilio Fantin delicately restores a sense of new freedom, a freedom given by thought, as a place of doing which overcomes physical impediments and the barriers and preconceptions of those who live in a limited physicality, but who, as Claudio says, can do anything with their mind.
Premio “Tutta la città insieme!” – “Whole City Together!” Award
Incontri Delivery – Meetings Delivery (9’20”)
Director: Matteo Canini
Marco is a young rider in the city of Venice: his job is to deliver take-away food as fast as possible. He is not at all happy about how this job exploits him, finding himself treated badly by everyone. However, deliveries are an opportunity that sometimes lead him into rather bizarre situations.
Premio Coop – Coop Award
Isole Ciclopi – Cyclops Islands (5’)
Director: Matthew Mendelson
A mother returns to a familiar port in a struggle to reclaim her lost memories.
Premio Vetrina del Volontariato – Volunteer Showcase Award
Slow (10’28”)
Directors: Giovanni Boscolo, Daniele Nozzi
Since Marisa has retired, her life has profoundly changed: she feels useless, abandoned, without a purpose. An encounter with a secret organisation of pensioners reveals to her one of the greatest mysteries in the history of mankind: road traffic.
Giovani Venezia: una città – Young People Venice: a city
Solitario Venezia Marghera Lonely Venice Marghera (6’07”)
Director: Zhang Shiqi
This short film is part of a series of videos made as part of teaching exercises by students at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts, Annexe on the island of San Servolo, as part of the Laboratorio Arti Visive C (LabC) project by Professor Manuel Frara, assisted by the participation of his colleague Nemanja Cvijanovic and coordinated with artists Enrico Antonello and Matteo Vettorello. Lonely Venice Marghera is a moving portrayal of the desperate plea for help of someone who has no words to communicate, either with the individuals or institutions in a foreign country, and relies on a universal code, well aware of the difficulty of getting the attention he deserves, spreading his message respectfully on the walls of an inhospitable suburb.
Fuori concorso – Out of competition
Veni Etiam (7’04”)
Director: Alex Hai
“Il mio vuole essere un tributo a Venezia” sostiene Alex “ma anche la denuncia di un sistema che ha regole poco chiare e che è chiuso di fronte ai cambiamenti. Le discriminazioni subite per il mio essere transgender si sommano a quelle subite per voler esercitare un mestiere che è nelle mani di una lobby che esclude la diversità. Ma Venezia ti entra nel sangue, diventa la tua linfa vitale ed è questo che ho voluto trasmettere in Veni Etiam”.
