ShorTS – Cinematic Innovation in Sunny Trieste
When you tell people you work for a film festival, they often look confused and ask how long the festival is. It’s as if they think the festival just happens. The reality, of course, is that a huge amount of work is required to bring a festival to life, the vast majority of which goes on behind the scenes unbeknownst to the public.
So it was that, upon starting my placement with Associazione Maremetraggio – the association behind the ShorTS – International Film Festival – I was immediately thrown into the deep end of festival organisation. ShorTS is a festival which prides itself on the fact that the festival’s selection committee watch each and every one of the shorts they are sent; something which cannot be said of all film festivals. Every film, then, needs to be catalogued, watched and judged before the selection process can be finalised – a process which involves a great deal of discussion and re-watching, not to mention regular communication with filmmakers from all around the world. To put this into perspective, the 2017 edition of the festival has (at the time of writing) received in excess of 4000 entries for the main prize. Once the selection process has been finalised, things really begin to heat up with constant communication required with each of the selected filmmakers regarding screening practicalities, catalogue and programme entries (all of which are required in both English and Italian), promotional materials and hospitality arrangements.
And that’s just for the main section. All of this and more are also required for the SweeTS4Kids section dedicated to children’s cinema, the Nuove Impronte section dedicated to debut feature films from Italian directors, and a feature section dedicated to showing a range of work by a big name in Italian cinema.