La Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, announces the eighth edition (2019-2020) of the Biennale College – Cinema, the higher education workshop for emerging filmmakers to develop and produce microbudget feature films.
In this edition, there will again be a track reserved for Italian applicants.
Today, Wednesday February 20th, a call has been launched on the website www.labiennale.org, dedicated to teams composed exclusively of a director and a producer of Italian nationality.
The Biennale College Cinema – International call, on the other hand, will be launched after the Italian call starting May 7th 2019 (through July 1st, 2019).
The Italian call, which will be open today through April 15th 2019, is dedicated to teams composed of directors at their debut or sophomore film, in association with producers who have made at least three audio-visual works, or a fiction feature-length film, or a documentary, distributed and/or presented at film festivals.
At the close of the registration phase, eight microbudget projects will be invited to participate in a development workshop, to be held in English, from July 2nd to 6th 2019 in Venice.
At the end of this workshop, and following an evaluation of the updated materials produced by the teams and submitted to the staff of the Biennale College – Cinema by mid-August, there will be a further selection of up to 3 projects. They will then be invited to take part, along with the teams of the nine projects selected through the International Call of the Biennale College – Cinema, launched on May 7th, in a ten-day workshop that will be held in Venice in October.
The announcement of the projects selected for the training session in October will be made during the 76th Venice International Film Festival 2019 directed by Alberto Barbera. From that moment, the two tracks of the eighth edition of the College Cinema programme, BCC-Italia and BCC-International, will proceed jointly, towards the selection and presentation of three micro-budget feature-length films at the 77th Venice Film Festival 2020.
Biennale College – Cinema is the initiative launched in 2012 by La Biennale di Venezia to promote new talents in cinema, offering them the opportunity to work side by side with the masters, to make feature-length films on a budget of € 150,000, to be developed and produced within a year for presentation at the Venice International Film Festival.
Biennale College is a complex and innovative experience that engages all the Departments of La Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta.
MEDIA – Creative Europe Programme
The Biennale College – Cinema and Biennale College – Cinema Virtual Reality projects in this edition have received generous funding from the MEDIA – Creative Europe Programme of the European Commission – General Direction Connect. The educational activities in this edition will enjoy the support of the MEDIA funding. This funding is in addition to the support received from the MEDIA Programme for the development of the Venice Production Bridge.
Biennale College – Cinema, organized by the Biennale di Venezia, is supported by the Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and Activities – General Direction Cinema. It is sponsored by the Università Telematica Pegaso, and enjoys the support of Condé Nast for the project. Biennale College – Cinema relies on the academic collaboration of IFP New York, and the TorinoFilmLab. The Director is Alberto Barbera, Head of Programme Savina Neirotti.