Next November 14^th, the Ministry of the Environment and the Fondazione Cinema per Roma will inaugurate “New Cinema Network – Progetto Serra”, a veritable creative workshop with the stated purpose of bringing new cinema and its young talents in closer touch with the themes of man, the planet and the preservation of both. The presentation, which will be held at 11:00 AM at the Casa del Cinema as part of the Rome Film Festival (Festival Internazionale del Cinema di Roma), will be attended by the Minister of the Environment, Corrado Clini, who will illustrate to twenty-seven young Italian talents, selected from the various areas of filmmaking (direction, screenwriting, animation, production, editing, photography), the four major themes that they will develop during the workshop. The Fondazione Cinema per Roma will offer them the spaces, tools and technical means to make eight mini-films lasting two and a half minutes each at most, focusing on the themes discussed with the Ministry of the Environment: a creative greenhouse where new ideas and projects can burgeon and grow, to foster awareness of the new ethical and environmental culture. The mini-films will be both fiction and animation, but there will also be room for the expression of the culture of recycled/recycling, of video-art and documentary filmmaking. The young filmmakers participating in the project were selected by the educational institutions involved as partners in the “Progetto Serra”: Scuola Holden (Turin), Scuola Nazionale di Cinema (Rome, Milan, Palermo, and Turin), NUCT (Rome), ASFOR Cinema (Rome), Università Luiss Guido Carli (Rome), Università Bocconi (Milan).

The first phase of the project will last from November 19^th through December 1^st: participants will begin to produce the projects, with the help of a tutor and a coordinator appointed by the Fondazione Cinema per Roma, which will also organize specific encounters with Italian film professionals who will bring greater richness and stimulation to the work.  Each creative team must share its idea for the mini-film on the Facebook page of “Progetto Serra”: a “competition” will then be held in which visitors to the page can select their favourite project, which will receive a bonus for the post-production of the video (in any case, all eight participating projects will be produced). Phase two of “Progetto Serra”, from December 1^st through 22^nd, will be the production phase: the Fondazione Cinema per Roma will provide the technical means required for the preparation and production of the eight mini-films. The masters of the finished products must be submitted by January 10^th2013. A commission, nominated by the Ministry of the Environment and the Fondazione Cinema per Roma, will judge the eight videos: one work for each of the themes assigned by the Ministry will win an award.