Now in its 22nd edition, the “Francesco Pasinetti” Video Contest has become a key meeting point for young talents, enthusiasts, and professionals in the film industry, aiming to foster cinematographic productions—including independent and experimental works—in Venice. The Pasinetti Festival, chaired by Anna Ponti and curated by Giovanni Andrea Martini, Michela Nardin, Marco Paladini, Isabella Albano, Martina Zennaro, Valentina Magris, and Marina Nostran, places particular emphasis on short films dealing with social, cultural, and environmental issues, as well as documentaries, especially those connected to the city of Venice.
The Festival maintains a strong connection with the educational sphere, particularly with the Michelangelo Guggenheim Art High School, where the initiative first took shape when the institution was still known as the Istituto Statale d’Arte di Venezia. This year, one of the award ceremonies will be held in the Guggenheim’s Main Hall.
The competition continues to focus on the city, narrating its life and traditions while remaining alert to contemporary challenges and future prospects. Once again, for this edition, the festival’s events will be hosted in various venues across Venice: the Casa del Cinema, the Teatro ai Frari, the “Kolbe” Theatre, the Veneto Region space at the Venice Film Festival, and in Cibiana di Cadore, a place steeped in history and fascination that will host a special Pasinetti evening dedicated to mountain cinema.
“Are they stones or are they clouds?”—this quote from Dino Buzzati is the title of a section focusing on the landscapes, architecture, and stories of the Pale Mountains, the Dolomites. As every year, a special prize will be awarded by the Vetrina del Volontariato (Volunteer Showcase). In addition, another section will address a pressing issue: “Ti amo da… vivere” (“I love you so... I can live”), intended as a school of emotions that highlights the genuine breath of love.
“Vedere poesia” (“Seeing Poetry”) is a section specifically devoted to short films that translate both published and unpublished poetry into images. A new section—“Corto Kids,” curated by Solenn Le Marchand—targets short films for children and created by children under 15. The theme for this year is “children’s rights,” open to international shorts realized within or outside of school, focusing on the rights of children and adolescents.
The judging panel is chaired by Manfredo Manfroi, emeritus president of the La Gondola Photographic Circle, and is composed of experts in the field as well as individuals from Venice’s cultural scene.
Venice is also the focus of a special award presented by the association “Tutta la Città Insieme!” This award encapsulates the underlying theme that ties all the festival’s sections together: the right to live in inclusive communities, where dialogue is a precious tool of discovery, diversity is a source of enrichment, and harmonious coexistence is the cornerstone of human relationships.
The complete regulations for the 22nd edition are available on www.festivalpasinetti.il.
Giovanni Andrea Martini
The title of the video is inspired by its soundtrack, a spiritual titled Trampin’, sung by Patti Smith, featuring the line “Tryin’ to make heaven my home.” This short film aims to serve as a “memory book” of the city over the past decade, capturing moments of joy and difficulty, as well as the daily struggles of its inhabitants to prevent everyday life from becoming a kind of hell.
A series of video “incursions” into everyday life, created by students at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts.
Cannaregio in the 1970s is brought to life through six reels of 120-meter Super 8 film which, reinterpreted and re-edited with a new perspective, resurrect a long-lost Venice. A visual reinterpretation by Camillo Valle, in collaboration with RI-PRESE – memory keepers – and Cineoptica, enriched by the music of the Venetian group Dreghe e i Fioi. Fondamenta della Misericordia is reflected in its canals and memories through the activities of the Remo D’Oro Sports Association (which used to be a trattoria, now Paradiso Perduto) run by the Pagin family. Music and silver-halide film combine to recount a vanished Venice and preserve its memory.
“An experiment I carried out using whatever objects I had on hand, while stuck indoors for a day due to COVID,” says the author. The concept was to have a sardine tin box act like a gondola (with a small clothespin serving as the prow) inside a basin—like a mini version of St. Mark’s Basin—surrounded by columns, dragons, bridges, and masks, all symbols of that particular time.
This video is the result of several short works produced by the 1E class at the Michelangelo Guggenheim Art High School during their Art Lab sessions. Accompanied by poetic lines, these mini animations reflect the feelings and imaginations of young students, offering a glimpse of adolescent simplicity and spontaneity.
Omayma pays tribute to the memory of a real-life woman, yet it also stands as a representative work for narrating—poignantly and poetically—what could be the fate of many other women. The demon of possession has no nationality, religion, or skin color, emerging in all its blind ferocity. The dual narrative structure offers a powerfully visual approach to personal stories, gifting viewers with images that will linger in our collective consciousness.
The Venetian lagoon is a remarkable ecosystem that deserves everyone’s respect. However, profit-seeking often shatters this balance and causes serious damage to both the environment and the city. Pollution and wave motion threaten the survival of the lagoon and Venice itself, which is intrinsically tied to it.
This animation was created by children from refugee camps in Gaza in 2024, during a workshop. The same approach—engaging local elementary schools—is what the “Corto Kids” section of the Pasinetti Video Contest, curated by Solenn Le Marchand, aims to replicate.
La regione dell’ultravioletto offers a taste of the video that will be presented during the Pasinetti Festival in the form of an informal talk. Introduced by Elisa Barbieri, with contributions by Manuel Frara (Academy of Fine Arts) and the artist Daniela Manzolli, it encourages reflection on the purpose and essence of recorded video images—those that transcend their own ego to become documents. It challenges us with a subtle sense of doubt, sometimes dismissed as a mere chromatic echo of an emotion that might seem absent but actually longs to be told, emerging suddenly and unannounced.
