■ The International Festival of Mediterranean Documentary and News Film
Created in 1994, the International Festival of Mediterranean Documentary & News Film helps give a better visibility to films dealing with the societies, history, heritage, and art in Mediterranean countries. The Festival also helps these films get better distribution across the region.
In collaboration with its partners in broadcasting and the audiovisual world, the Festival is organised by the CMCA. The towns which have already hosted the Festival are Palermo, Soverato, Syracuse, Noto, Civitavecchia, Cagliari, Turin and Marseille.
The International Jury is made up of cinema and TV professionals (directors, producers, distributors), as well as specialists in the Mediterranean area.
Each year the CMCA receives some 300 films from around 30 countries to compete in one of five categories: Mediterranean Challenges – Memories - Art, Heritage and Culture - First Film – Investigative Documentary.
The Festival is also a chance for people working in the business to get together, exchange ideas and experiences, while at the same time building an international network.
The Festival is open to all television companies (public or private), production houses (public, private or community-based), authors, journalists, and documentary film makers who, through their work, spread a wider and deeper awareness of Mediterranean history, culture and tradition.
Since 2001 the Festival's Artistic Director has been the CMCA's General Secretary, Paolo Morawski (RAI).
The Competition has three phases:
- In March: Call for programmes.
- In June: an international jury pre-selects those films which will be shown in the finals
Deadline for registering and sending films: 31th May 2010
- In December, the final phase of the Festival: the international jury view all the preselected films and decide the winners; public screenings; meetings and debates; awards ceremony.
Six awards are given to the films in competition:
- CMCA Grand Prix "Mediterranean Challenges" (6,000 €) This prize is given to the best film (documentary or news) on a current Mediterranean subject. It picks out productions which improve our understanding of the present situation in the Mediterranean and rewards a director’s skill at questioning events and putting them into perspective, as well as his capacity to listen to the principal characters.
- "Mediterranean Memories" (5,000 €) This prize rewards the documentary which, with or without archives, most successfully places in a present-day context historical events concerning the Mediterranean, stories of men and women, whether individual or collective, or places of symbolism and memory.
- "First Work" (5,000 €) This prize rewards a director who hasn’t made more than 3 films, or a work produced within a school or training programme.
- "Mediterranean Art, Heritage and Cultures" (5,000 €) This prize rewards the documentary film which highlights the region’s artistic life (music, plastic arts, live theatre, visual arts), its heritage (sites, monuments, works of art, archaeology, architecture) and other instances of Mediterranean culture (folklore and traditions).
- Special Jury Award (5,000 €), all categories together. This prize rewards a film which has not received any other prize but which the jury considers of special merit.
- Investigative Documentary (5,000 €), This award is for the best filmed investigation, one which gets to the heart of an event, past or present, within the Mediterranean region.
These awards are for the directors and authors of the work concerned.
In addition, broadcasting awards may be given by representatives of the television companies and are entirely at their discretion. They will be chosen from amongst any of the films in the final selection. The broadcast of any work thus rewarded has to be agreed individually between the broadcaster and the makers of the film.
The 15th Edition of International Festival of Mediterranean Documentary and News Film is open!
Registration for the Festival is free.
Deadline for registering and sending films: 31th May 2010
Download Registration Form
