Each year the students of the Documentary Cinema Laboratory of the Master in Visual Arts and Fashion at IUAV University of Venice create a series of experimental works, presented at the end of the course.

Students are stimulated and assisted in the making of a short film through a process of sharing cinematographic knowledge: a workshop of visions that embraces non-canonical cinematographic forms - from creative documentary to artist cinema, from animation to found footage film.
The workshop activities led by Marco Bertozzi with the assistance of Matteo Primiterra aims  to develop further the creative possibilities of non-fiction cinema, as well as the strong spontaneous movement towards non-canonical forms of cinematographic expression. Many works created by the Laboratory have been presented in exhibitions and have obtained awards in national and international film festivals. 

A group of Asian tourists arrives in the lagoon of an imaginary Venice in an indefinite period for a stay and begins a journey within the territory, guided by an audio guide.

by C. Chiatti, C. Faggionato, D. Tucci (IUAV) – 15’

Transmigration, the belief and the supposed passage at death of the soul of a human being into a new body of the same or a different species. The disco, a meeting place, frequented mostly by young people, where you can dance to the sound of recorded music. What remains of these great monsters, abandoned and sown like open graves in cemeteries of memories? The memory and the witnesses of the voices of some of the protagonists of that world, the DJs, question these places and wonder what they still have to tell, what survives beyond the rubble. Is there anything beyond those dancing ghosts? This is a journey in search of a soul that persists.

by L. Adessi, E. Boraggini, B. Marrotta, I. Pisanu (IUAV) 15’

Four characters, with completely different lives, telling their daily lives during the global pandemic of early 2020, their individual stories are told through voice notes, one of the means of connection between people during the lockdown while the videos and images they were made entirely by them. In this way the film becomes the real mirror, without filters, of their lives, their feelings, their real life with different problems and points of view. Their lives will flow parallel and will meet only at the end of their story through a video chat.

by G. Garozzo, V. Corvaro, E. Tentella, G.C. Carelli (IUAV) – 14’

Three journeys and three languages accompany a journey of personal memories. Stories of expatriation and emigration told through the voices of students, animated sequences and family films. A reflection on the open character of identities, and on the possibility of making apparently dispersed memories alive and public. 

by H. Baboyan, P. Mendoza, L. Ortheil, F. Borghese, A. Lazzari (IUAV) – 20’

A man's dream brings us into an ancestral dimension, where the boundaries between nature and the domestic environment seem to give way, revealing a re-thought vegetable microcosm, in which the passage of time has no boundaries. Upon awakening him, man finds himself inside the home, realizing that he has imagined a world that does not exist.

by G. Raimondo, E. Di Leone, M. Tanasie (IUAV) – 5’

Memory is a fragile device. Everything fights against memory, so much so that its details and images are dematerialized generation after generation. In “Forgotten” the narrator shows us those successive passages that speak to us of prayer, from its origin to its end. Only the narrative, not the ritual or its exotic functions, make memory. The complexity of the story lies in highlighting the fragility of the word, linking the ritual and the narrative register and putting memory and oblivion in close relationship, until they are inseparable. A forgotten prayer lives on in the story that the narrator does not forget.

by N. Ciuffo, F. Caccuri, I. Pisanti (IUAV) – 22’

The short tells, through an original interview and archival materials, the journey from dentist to traveling writer of Gianluigi Gasparini, aka Marco Steiner, thanks to the meeting with Hugo Pratt. Between passages from novels, travels in the Pacific and narrative suggestions, the writer is invited to retrace his choices and the acquaintance with the creator of Corto Maltese, who encouraged him to write and invented his nom de plume.

by G. Ghiretti, F. Soffietti (IUAV) – 20’