Founder and Director Frano Rina Talks CinamadaMare

The 2018 edition ofCinemadamare, a program which offers hands-on filmmaking to the directors of tomorrow, is underway. The program gives up-and-coming filmmakers the freedom and equipment amid the stunning sea and landscapes of the Italian peninsula to explore their creativity. CinemadaMare is aimed at young people from all over the world who participate in the program by visiting numerous locations throughout Italy to make films. Last year when I traveled to Matera to talk with Franco Rina, the founder and director of the program, participants made 16 short films in just one week. Upon completion, the filmmakers presented their works in a special community screening followed by an awards ceremony. 

Rina and I covered a lot of ground during our conversation and we’ll hear from him later in regard to filmmaking in Basilicata. For now, he shares the nuts and bolts of CinemadaMare and why it’s so important to aspiring filmmakers. 

So let’s start at the beginning. Why did you start this program?

It started in 2003 as a need to bring together young filmmakers, to give a voice to young filmmakers, to offer a screen to young filmmakers and to offer an audience to young filmmakers. By young filmmakers, I mean all those people who have not yet entered the film industry and the cinema market, which often are also prey to exploitation by some events, which use them to create publicity and catwalks for their friends and their fellow filmmakers. They often give awards to each other. So there was the need to create a place without a red carpet, without champagne and without special guests.

How did you come up with the name, CinemadaMare, which in English, translates to Cinema from the Sea?

As you can see in the name, there is no reference to a particular place. We call it CinemadaMare because it was born near the sea, in Nova Siri in Basilicata, and because it plays on the word precisely of the sea and of love. People are drawn to this program from all over the world due to their love of cinema- those who love to make it and those who love to watch it. 

How has the festival evolved since the first edition in 2003?

Over time it has grown dramatically because it now lasts three months and runs all over Italy. We host more than three hundred filmmakers from over sixty countries, from all continents, and we started a great relationship with universities and film schools from all over the world- important schools and universities ranging from the Sorbonne to the University of Jakarta, Los Angeles, Barcelona, ​​Moscow, Brussels, South Africa, Morocco, Sudan and Kenya.

How are the participants chosen?

We have bilateral agreements with universities, which contemplate some work we do together during the year and then during CinemadaMarein the summer. The universities send their student filmmakers here. We host them for free so as to make a kind of permanent campus of filmmakers.  

The 2018 participants have gathered in the Basilicata town of Genzano di Lucania with director Franco Rina and filmmaker Mimmo Calopresti (pictured above). Click here for more information about CinemadaMare and to follow the 2018 adventures!  

By- Jeannine Guilyard