Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
Founded in 2003 by Franco Rina, Cinemadamare is an Italian-based international program offering hands-on filmmaking to the directors of tomorrow. Now in its 20th edition, the program gives film students the freedom and equipment to explore their creativity surrounded by the picturesque and seascapes and landscapes of the Italian peninsula.
On a recent stay in Matera, the participants of the program made 16 short films in just one week. Upon completion, the filmmakers presented their works in a special community screening followed by an awards ceremony. That’s where I met up with Rina to talk with him about the program and why it’s so important to aspiring filmmakers.
Fra Noi: So let’s start at the beginning. Why did you start this program?
Franco Rina: It started in 2003 as a need to bring together young filmmakers, to give a voice to young filmmakers, to offer a screen to young filmmakers and to offer an audience to young filmmakers. By young filmmakers, I mean all those people who have not yet entered the film industry and the cinema market, which often are also prey to exploitation by some events, which use them to create publicity and catwalks for their friends and their fellow filmmakers. They often give awards to each other. So there was the need to create a place without a red carpet, without champagne and without special guests.
FN: How did you come up with the name, Cinemadamare, which in English, translates to Cinema from the Sea?
FR: As you can see in the name, there is no reference to a particular place. We call it Cinemadamare because it was born near the sea, in Nova Siri in Basilicata, and because it plays on the word precisely of the sea and of love. People are drawn to this program from all over the world due to their love of cinema: those who love to make it and those who love to watch it.
FN: How has the festival evolved since the first edition in 2003?
FR: Over time, it has grown dramatically because it now lasts three months and runs all over Italy. We host more than three hundred filmmakers from over sixty countries, from all continents, and we started a great relationship with universities and film schools from all over the world- important schools and universities ranging from the Sorbonne to the University of Jakarta, Los Angeles, Barcelona, Moscow, Brussels, South Africa, Morocco, Sudan and Kenya.
FN: How are the participants selected?
FR: We have bilateral agreements with universities, which contemplate some work we do together during the year and then during Cinemadamare in the summer. The universities send their student filmmakers here. We host them for free so as to make a kind of permanent campus of filmmakers.
For more information about Cinemadamare, click here.
https://www.cinemadamare.com/en/
To follow the program’s adventures on Facebook, click here. https://www.facebook.com/Cinemadamare
