Visioni Fantastiche has officially started, the new spectacular film festival in Ravenna dedicated to schools exploring fantastic cinema. Inspired by Giffoni Film Festival, Visioni Fantastiche represents – thanks to its original training proposal – a unique film center for all students and movie-goers. Among premieres, competitions, workshops, Master Classes and meetings, the artistic and educational proposal of the Festival represents an absolute novelty in the Italian festival scene and, precisely for this uniqueness, is absolutely unmissable.

At 8:30 am Short Film Competition 6+ was scheduled, which included a rich carnet of films for students aged six to eight. The Competition allows children not only to see the films in the theatre but also to vote them after the vision, covering the role of spectators and jurors.

6+ Competition continued in the afternoon at 2.30pm with The Snow Queen: Mirrorlands, an animated feature directed by Aleksys Tsitsilin. The film tells the story of Gerda who, together with the Snow Queen, will try to save the world from the evil spell of a powerful king and free her friends from the Mirrorlands, the fearsome fairy lands. The five feature films of the Competition will compete for a single Best Film award, which will be awarded to the most voted by the reference jury. The prize for Best Feature Film by Visioni Fantastiche will be in mosaic and will represent the Labyrinth for the garden of Ravenna prison, created by Dis-ORDINE Association. For each of the five categories of the competition, instead, the short film most voted by the jury among those presented will receive a prize for Best Short Film, corresponding to a cash prize of € 200.00.

In addition to watching the films, students will also be able to participate in the workshops, which focus on practical experiences regarding cinema in its most manual aspect. At 9.00am the first workshop was held for 18+ students: “Budding screenwriters! Let’s write a commercial”, held by the director and screenwriter Francesco Filippi, which taught the basic principles to write a coherent and captivating script. In the afternoon, instead, at 2.30 pm, the first workshop for 9+ students was held: “Let’s animate Ponyo with Papercut Animation”, conducted by artists Axel Zani and Davide Bart Salvemini, in which the students gave life to Ponyo, the famous girl-fish from the film by Miyazaki, with the help of cardboard, scissors and glue. A small cartoon was produced at the end of the workshop.

Then we arrive at the main event of the day: at 6.00 pm professors Alessandro Iannucci and Andrea Bernardelli have arrived for the Master Class on “Tv Villains”. The Master Classes, free and open to all, consist of lectures whose themes will range between cinema, seriality and new media. This first Master Class has examined the concept of anti-hero, to define its limits and understand the Italian television landscape, exploring the new ways of constructing and narrating the protagonists of contemporary audio-visual production.

Finally, to conclude with the great animated films, Tribute to the Masters proposed an exclusive evening screening at 9.00 pm of “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea”, the iconic film of the Japanese animation prince, Hayao Miyazaki, to whom the section is dedicated. The fillm speaks of Ponyo, a fish that, driven by the strength of friendship, will become human to be with her friend Sosuke. A magical and sincere story able to fascinate spectators of all ages.

All Visioni Fantastiche events and screenings are free and will take place in Palazzo del Cinema and Congressi, in Largo Firenze 1. Schools can still enroll classes of students in the training activities of the Festival (Competition Juries, Laboratories, Masters Class and Interactive Spaces) by contacting us at segreteriavisionifantastiche@gmail.com