24° ​EUROMEDITERRANEAN CONFERENCE ON CINEMA
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“CINEMA EVOLUTION IN THE DIGITAL ERA
THE MEDITERRANEAN AS
PARAPHRASE OF THE WORLD”
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Hotel Excelsior, Lido di Venezia
9 September 2022, 14.00 CEST
Spazio Regione del Veneto - Film Commission
79th Venice International Film Festival
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AGENDA
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Institutional Greetings
Ernesto Ottone R., Assistant Director-General Culture Sector, UNESCO
Fabrizio Spada, International Relations Manager, European Parliament Liaison Office, Rome
Cristiano Corazzari, Culture Councilor, Regione Veneto
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General Introduction
Pierpaolo Saporito, President OCCAM (UN-affiliated) and President a.I. International Council for Film and Television, CICT-ICFT
New frontiers of the digital cinema (hybrid format online)
Giacomo Mazzone, Secretary-General, Eurovisioni
Todd Courtney, Cofounder & CEO, PICTICULAR
Alessandro Mandelli, Founder, Serially
Jasmina Bojic, Founder and President, UNAFF Travelling Film Festival, Stanford University
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Euromediterranean Expressions (hybrid format online)
Paola Parri, Secretary-general COPEAM
Micol Pancaldi, delegate COPEAM
Serge Michel, Vice President CICT UNESCO, UNICA Delegate
Ahmet Boyacioglu, Director, Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival
Amir Ramses, Festival Director, Cairo Film Festival
Melita Zajc, Associate Professor, Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis (AMEU-ISH) Ljubljana
Georges Dupont, Treasurer a.I., General Director a.H, CICT-ICFT
Rizwan Ahamd, Director, Instructional Media Centre, MANUU
Manouj Kadaamh, Owner, 24 Frames Entertainment
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FINAL DECLARATION
"Ceremony of Proclamation of the winner of the XXXIV CICT-ICFT UNESCO Prix “Enrico Fulchignoni”,
awarded with the “UNESCO Fellini Medal”
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PRESENTATION
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Over the past ten years, new and powerful technologies allowed everyone to produce and share their movies all over the world, in what has become the social media standard. On one side, this enables to enrichment of the knowledge of the history of cinema, reopening the great archives of the majors and relaunching the restoration of movies. On the other side, it became clear that entire geographical areas, cultures, and productions, remain left out from this process. In the meantime, new tools have opened the door to all not only for the use – that has exponentially increased during the pandemic, especially the domestic one – but also in terms of production, thus expanding the operational field of the digital cinema that in turn is changing the very notion of cinema as was traditionally understood.
On these premises, the Mediterranean area, an enlarged concept of crossroads of three continents, cradle of great religions and civilizations reverberating global cultures, recording an unambiguous polarization towards the Northern part, thus emarginating valid productions from the global market is the perfect paradigm of change. In this context, on the one hand, Cinema and television still play an important role in the context of Mass Media communication, in representing the voice of peoples and governments, at least for a large portion of the population; On the other, with the Digital Revolution, new scenarios and protagonists have emerged; These have further undermined the relationship between the new generations and traditional media channels. In this context, the actual challenge embraced both by our Society and by the International Council of Cinema and Television to be further investigated in this edition of the Conference is how to generate a creative synthesis capable of merging the different expressivities into a new cultural dimension that could be inclusive and representative of all.
Analyzing this very particular moment of transition to present the new scenarios, and to prepare those alliances that will allow, also through the structure of the festivals, to widen access to productions of non-hegemonic countries and cultures is the aim of the XXIV Euro-Mediterranean Conference on Cinema, organized by the CICT, the International Council of Cinema and Television in partnership with UNESCO.
What new plots have emerged and are emerging? What are the main processes in place? Who are the protagonists of these new developments? How to create new poles of aggregation that represent the entelekia of this process? What are the future scenarios that the new generation is creating with all the available tools of expressiveness and communication?
These questions will be the focus of the debate promoted by CICT UNESCO, thus helping to update the thirty years of studies and debates that led to the creation of the MCM, the Permanent Conference of the Mediterranean Audiovisual (COPEAM) and several Awards, first among others the Enrico Fulchignoni Prize with its UNESCO Fellini medal and formulate new hypotheses of cultural initiatives of high value in the focal areas of the world. In line with the principles of UNESCO and the UN that have always directed the thread of the activities promoted, the proposal of CICT is to place this reflection at the center of the XXIV Euro-Mediterranean Conference. The hypothesis that will be developed by the different speakers is to verify conditions and prospects of collaboration and active participation between the territories of film communication and those of digital communication to ensure that a creative synthesis can merge the real to the virtual so to inspire the new Digital Society to be more creative and inclusive.
HISTORY OF THE CONFERENCE
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The Euromediterranean Conference on Communication was created in 1995 by the European Parliament and UNESCO’s International Council on Film and Television. It was born as a result of the 1995 Barcelona Declaration under the High Patronage of the President of the Italian Republic and has always seen a concrete support from the European Parliament Office in Milan. The Conference aims at creating a network and a series of projects finalised to the realisation of a Euro-Mediterranean integration, as well as the socio-economic development of the region. It represents one of the most prestigious cultural events of the Venice International Film Festival and an opportunity for a dialogue among the different stakeholders in the fields of culture, communication and ICTs.
In over twenty years, almost 1300 speakers attended, representing governments, international organisations – such as the United Nations, the European Union and the Council of Europe – public and private institutions, foundations and NGOs, directors and experts. They elaborated and implemented interventions and projects of great relevance, including:
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The creation of new film festivals in Tirana, Ohrid, Zagreb, Beirut, Izmir, Khouribga, Gaza, Damascus, Cairo, Tripoli, Kalamata, Menorca, Hammamet, Marrakech, Antalya, supporting UN peacekeeping action and leading to the birth of the International Council of Mediterranean Cinematic Manifestations (MCM);
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The establishment of the Permanent Conference of the Mediterranean Audiovisual Operators (COPEAM), an organisation currently representing 42 Euro-Mediterranean public televisions with an audience of over 350 million viewers;
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Participation to the UNESCO Mediterranean Programme, with various projects in eight countries;
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The development of the Euromed Audiovisual programme with the European Commission;
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The realisation of regional projects within the Infopoverty Programme at the United Nations and the organisation of an Africa/Euromediterranean Session in collaboration with the European Parliament at the Infopoverty World Conference that takes place every year at the UN Headquarters;
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Several seminars at the UN World Summits on the Information Society (WSIS) and the creation of the ICT Villages of Borj Touil in Tunisia and Meis el Jabal in Southern Lebanon, supporting the education of Palestinian refugees;
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The creation of the annual ICFT-UNESCO Prix “Enrico Fulchignoni”, awarded to the movie that best promotes the values of peace and tolerance at the Venice International Film Festival;
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The support to the European Parliament’s Lux Prix awarded to the movies that best reflect European values and multiculturalism and that contribute to the promotion of the debate of the process of Euro-Mediterranean integration;
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The development of an “e-Service Platform for the Mediterranean” for transferring health, education, agricultural and business skills from research centres for remote diagnosis and therapy, crop management, and job creation;
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The launch of the World Health & Food Security e-Center, which gathers 21 scientific societies as e-service providers supporting the Platform;
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The launch of the eMedMed project for the development of health security in the Mediterranean was presented at the French Senate as the Best Med Programme and validated by the Union for the Mediterranean.