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Closing sending April 30th 2018

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NAZRA
(look)
Palestine Short Film Festival

Promoted by:
Restiamo Umani con Vik – Venice
École Cinéma – Naples
Italian Center for Cultural exchange-VIK – Gaza

 INTRODUCTION
The Nazra Palestine Short Film Festival is an annual, traveling and multicultural festival on freedom, human rights and justice, with a special focus on the contemporary reality in Palestine.

Nazra is a short films festival of Palestinian and International authors targeted to a cinema-loving audience.

Thanks to its characteristic young, fast and full-of-content way of communicating, cinema has always had the power of overcoming real or virtual walls that in both cases isolate. In this way, cinema has always made possible going beyond differences in culture and way of living.

Through this short film festival, we would like to encourage a mutual dialogue between passion for cinema and artistic expression in general and the promotion of a culture of peace, justice and multiculturalism.

Nazra is the look, the perception we have of others, but also of ourselves. Thus, the Nazra Palestine Short Film Festival also becomes a pedagogical and cultural journey. It will be completed by laboratories hosted by Italian and Palestinian cultural centers. Despite the distances, this International collaboration will allow to develop mutual knowledge and transform the approach to the other’s culture in a common heritage, shared among the participants in the Festival, short films authors as well as spectators.

Also in its second edition, the main goal of the Festival is to show the problems and the expectations daily experienced by the Palestinians who live under occupation and in the absence of freedom and respect for human rights.

The Nazra Palestine Short Film Festival also aims to be an opportunity, for authors with great artistic skills but lacking sufficient financial resources, to express and present their ideas and reflections through the fast, young and clever short movies language.

After the success of the first edition, also this year the Nazra Palestine Short Film Festival aims at collecting the best of the artistic production of short films by Palestinian and non-Palestinian authors. The selection will be screened in the Italian and Palestinian cities hosting the Festival. In this way, messages of multiculturalism, peace and justice will be spread through the competing works.

ORGANIZERS
Coordinators responsible for the project:
Meri Calvelli (Centro italiano di scambi culturali VIK – Gaza) President
Sabrina Innocenti (Ecole Cinéma – Napoli) Vice-president
Franca Bastianello (“Restiamo Umani con Vik”) Secretary coordinator

President: Meri Calvelli
Vice-President: Sabrina Innocenti
Festival curator: Franca Bastianello
Artistic director: Simone Sibilio
Social media and communication: Cecilia Dalla Negra
Web site: Mario Dal Gesso
Translation and subtitles: Rossella Rossetto
Translation, subtitles and secretary: Fabiana Piretti

OBJECTIVES AND PURPOSES OF THE FESTIVAL
The general objective of the Festival:
The Nazra Palestine Short Film Festival aims at the promotion of cinematic artistic skills of authors who use the language of short films not only as a proof of their artistic expression, but also as a demonstration of their ability to deal with issues such as freedom, justice and emancipation in a situation of apartheid, with a focus on Palestine.

Specific objectives of the Festival:

  • Encouraging artistic and cultural expressions, emphasizing the excellence of Palestinian directors and producers.
  • Offering the possibility of channeling generational frustrations using video and artistic communication methods, non-violent but strongly significant and highly impressive.
  • Highlighting what has been achieved by many authors by bringing out their culture from the cramped and forgotten borders of a land troubled by conflict and occupation.
  • To promote dialogue, which always carries exchange, understanding and positive contamination through cinema.
  • Recalling the values on which the principles of freedom, justice and peace are based, encouraging the communication about Palestinian issues by non Palestinian authors.
  • Promoting the reflection on current topics and universal values and principles.
  • Encouraging the understanding of the troubles and difficulties of a militarily occupied land and its people, with few resources and many uncertainties for the future.
  • Encouraging the overcoming of physical (wall and apartheid) and mental barriers (prejudice and non-knowledge of the other).

METHOD
Annual, itinerant, multicultural and multimedia festival with screening of short films.
Organization of workshops and meetings on cinematographic techniques and Human Rights for young people in Italian high schools and universities, Palestinian schools and cultural centers and schools for cinema.

WHEN AND WHERE
The Festival takes place yearly. The second edition is scheduled for 2018.
The itinerant tour of the Festival will begin in September with the screening of the selected works in Venice, with three days of screenings and cultural meetings. During the third day the award ceremony will take place, with the most precious works named by the jury of the Festival.
After this, the projections and cultural initiatives of the Nazra Palestine Short Film Festival will continue in other Italian and Palestinian cities involved.

PARTICIPATION
Palestinian and non-Palestinian filmmakers can participate in the Festival. The authors can send their work for one of the following categories:

  • Fiction on/from Palestine by Palestinian and International author
  • A look on/from Palestine by International and Palestinian author – Documentary
  • Experimental on/from Palestine (video clips/video art/very short/other)

The International Jury will award the best film for each category.
Particularly interesting movies will be selected concerning:

  1. Gender look: works about gender issues, and more specifically women situation
  2. Press look: prize/special mention by a Jury of Journalists
  3. Solidarity look: movies on a solidarity project and/or supporting project to Palestinian people; “Vittorio Arrigoni Prize” donated by Fondazione Vittorio Arrigoni – Vik Utopia ONLUS.

For any detail regarding the procedures and requirements for participation please check the Festival Regulation.

 JURY
The Jury members will be nominated each year, chosen in the environment of Italian and Palestinian culture and cinema experts.
The International jury will select the three winners, one for each category.
Furthermore, in the cities hosting the Festival who adopt cultural or exchange projects with Palestinian schools or universities, Youth Juries will be appointed. Also, a Press Jury with experts in Italian and Palestinian culture will be appointed.

REPRODUCIBILITY
The Nazra Palestine Short Film Festival can become a traditional and recurrent cultural point of reference, with the characteristics of a short films competition, on an annual basis and with itinerant modes. It can be a melting pot of artistic initiatives aimed at the dialogue and promotion of a culture of peace.

Meri Calvelli
(President)

Attachments:
See and Download REGULATION
Download ENTRY FORM

Contacts:
e-mail: nazrafilmfestival@gmail.com
website: http://www.nazrashortfilmfestival.com