The 14th edition of Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival, the first film festival in Europe fully conceived, organized, and managed by a university, starts tomorrow. It will take place in a “widespread” modality throughout Venice, starting with the historical main location: the Auditorium Santa Margherita – Emanuele Severino, as well as six other venues, such as museums and cultural institutions of the city, with plenty of screenings, all of them open for free.
The poster, drawn yet again for this edition by illustrator Manuele Fior, invites viewers to focus their attention on a delightful and evocative corner of the city, taking them in a nocturnal and charming Venice, the perfect “ideal” bridge to cross for the first day of the festival. The Festival will start at 2 pm with a moment dedicated to two of our main partners: Venezia Comics, an acclaimed local review of comics and pop culture, awarding the prize of the best animated film, and WeShort, the platform for short films streaming on demand. A short film produced by WeShort will also be screened: Safari is a dramatic short written and directed by Leonardo Balestrieri, and dedicated to LBTQ+ community. The program will continue with showcasing young cinema, dedicating special attention to works made by Ca’ Foscari students, or more generally young people studying in Venice: four short films will be screened, crafted by members of the summer school “Films in Venice and Filming in Venice”, organized by Venice International University and other important international institutions, and two works by a young Ca’ Foscari video artist, Elizaveta Zalieva.
Before the official inauguration, attendees will have the opportunity to enjoy the four short films featured in the East Asia Now program, curated by Stefano Locati and dedicated to the “short” trends of East Asia. Primetime Mother will be screened, a short film by Sonny Calvento, from Philippines, a presence already known in our festival, but it will also be possible to discover new surprises, such as Nelson Yeo or Japanese Igarashi Kohei, both recently successful at Locarno Film Festival.
Following the inauguration, which will mark the beginning of this fourteenth edition, a complete immersion in Joanna Quinn’s world will welcome the audience at 5.30 PM. Quinn is a British animator, winner of numerous prizes, among them a BAFTA and an Emmy, and was nominated for an Oscar twice. Following a conversation with Davide Guirlando, professor of the Masters in Fine Arts in Filmmaking at Ca’ Foscari and expert in animation, the artist will present three short films, among them the Oscar-nominated Affairs of the Art. Quinn will also be protagonist of a workshop, in which she will unveil to the audience some of the secrets of her animation techniques.
At 8 PM, the first night of the festival will be dedicated to the International Competition, the beating heart of the event. Artistic Director Roberta Novielli comments: “The quality of the short films is remarkably high, surely the technologies improved, but there is also a major consciousness among young film directors about the way in which the filmic means can be expressive.”
Of the thirty short films selected, all produced in the last year by students of universities and film schools from all over the world, the first six will be screened, starting with La Notte, an Italian animation created at Torino’s CSC by Martina Generali, Simone Pratola and Francesca Sofia Rosso. This year’s edition does not lack short films about war, focusing on its consequences on the youngers. This is a recurrent topic, as we can see in Fater’s Footsteps by the Syrian Mohamad W. Ali, and in The Borders Never Die by Hamidreza Arjomandi from Iran.
This year’s winners will be announced by an all-female international jury, composed by the Italian director Antonietta De Lillo, Iranian colleague Ghasideh Golmakani and American critic and programmer Cynthia Felando, to whom a special programme will be dedicated on March 22.
