labiennale_ College – Cinema has now reached its 8th edition: a strategic programme for training new filmmakers from all around the world, which was already operating in the Dance, Music, Theatre departments of La Biennale di Venezia.
Biennale College fosters new talents, allowing them to work in contact with masters in order to develop “creations”.

This is a project of crucial importance and the Cinema department of La Biennale di Venezia has been revitalized and given a brand new configuration: a program of permanent activities “after and beyond the Festival” with a strong commitment to developing new creative energies channeled into producing art.

Biennale College – Cinema is supported by Ministero per i Beni e le attività culturali.

The primary goal is to supplement the Venice International Film Festival with an advanced training workshop for the development and production of micro-budget audio-visual works, open to teams of directors and producers from around the world.

The challenge is to be able to create – at the end of a year-long series of activities that cover the entire spectrum of filmmaking including the conception, development, production, marketing, audience engagement, sales and distribution of films – up to 3 feature length micro-budget audio-visual works – among which 1 Italian – that will be presented during the Venice International Film Festival and also have an on-line screening on the “Sala Web”, the virtual theatre added to the traditional theatres that house the screenings for the public and pass holders in the Lido.

An essential element of the initiative is the combination of not only training and production finance but also the screening of the completed film at the Venice International Film Festival giving the selected filmmakers much needed visibility – the lack of which is one of the major problems of today’s independent cinema.
Biennale College – Cinema also aims to advance research on micro-budget productions, which have become, in times of economic crisis, one of the few opportunities that new talents have to make the leap into producing and directing full feature films.

The eighth edition includes two different calls, one Italian (open 20th February until 15th April 2019) and one International, open 7th May until 1st July.

For each call, Biennale College Cinema is looking for feature-length audio-visual concepts that can be made with € 150.000,00 to be completed, developed, produced, edited and screened at the Venice International Film Festival in 2020.