Wednesday April 3rd at Antichi Chiostri Francescani in Ravenna press conference presenting Fantastic Visions took place, the new film festival dedicated to schools realised within National Plan of Cinema for Schools promoted by MIUR and MIBAC. After the preview of October 5th presenting both festivals, Fantastic Visions is going to be held at Palazzo del Cinema e dei Congressi from 21st to 29th October, which is the week preceeding the beginning of Ravenna Nightmare Film Fest's XVII edition, scheduled from October 30th to November 3rd.
Created and realised by co-op society Start Cinema - already organiser of historic Ravenna Nightmare - Fantastic Visions represents the natural evolution of a path dedicated to education, launched with determination over the last years. The reference is in particular to formative iniatiatives promoted within Nightmare School, Ravenna Nightmare's section consisting of a series of appointments before and during the festival, that used to propose visions, analysis and formative meetings. The Section, specifically addressed to students of all types and levels of the Municipality of Ravenna, used to be implemented through the realisation of a set of educational projects, realised with the aim of stimulating deeper analysing skills of audiovisual information in younger audiences. Starting from 2016, this section has grown both in the number of applications and in range of proposals, engaging more and more students. Therefore Fantastic Visions constitutes the culmination of such path, becoming one of the few Italian film festivals entirely dedicated to schools. As provided in Plan MIBAC - MIUR, the objective of this festival is to contract iconic illiteracy, through a didactic strategy valorising, and not suffering, the digital revolution that is taking place. The sharp drop of attention and focus span, that new generations suffer from, can be stopped and a festival like this one can contribute to restore a shared and aware audiovisual culture.
A true vocation, the one related to education, that originated within a festival and then culminated in a stand-alone event where cinema and formation go hand in hand. The formative path is further enriched with an important proposal. In relation to Ravenna Nightmare Film Fest, the Emilia-Romagna region, through main partner COM 2, in collaboration with Start Cinema, approved a quality training course on a specific subject as cinematographic distribution. The identified profile is the one of "Assistant to independent distribution - with skills in digital promotion and national/international networks developement starting from the excellence of Ravenna Film Festival - Ravenna Nightmare Film Fest". The course aims to form a professional figure able to know balance and know-how that new MIBAC Cinema Law has made available to independent producers, as far as national/international distribution of audiovisual product is concerned. The iniatative will start in May 2019 and is articulated in 334 hours for 13 trainees that will attend also the Festival getting in contact with present national and international distributors.