MalatestaShort Film Festival

Rules and Regulations

This document is an agreement between the applicant as submitter of the short film and "ALBEDO – Associazione di promozione sociale", located in Cesena, Italy, as responsible for the artistic direction and the organization of the "MalatestaShort Film Festival", as well as of other events and activities promoted by its members, by the festival organizers and their partners (hereinafter "Association", "ALBEDO", "the Festival", "MalatestaShort", "members", "organizers", "partners").
1. The "MalatestaShort Film Festival" has the aim to promote cinematic art through the screening of high quality and entertaining cinema productions.
2. All genres and formats are eligible to participate in the festival and to receive an award in one or more categories. Only short films with a runtime of 30 minutes or less can be submitted. Films must have been produced after 01/01/2017.
3. Short films are split in the following competitive categories: Best Animation, Best Fiction, Best Documentary and Best Experimental. For logistical reasons, during the screening at the Festival the category Best Experimental might be incorporated in one of the other categories.
4. You can submit your short film for Festival consideration through FilmFreeway: https://filmfreeway.com/festival/MalatestaShortFilmFestival. The deadlines for film submission are indicated on the online platform.
5. If your film is selected to participate in the Festival, as well as of other events and activities promoted by its members, by the festival organizers and their partners ,you will have to send the organizers your video, to the email address indicated, through file transfer services or external online links for download.
The Festival organizers will take care to create the DCP (Digital Cinema Package) file format from the videos they will receive. For this reason, the videos must have the highest possible quality in order to guarantee a correct conversion and a high-quality screening.
The sent videos must have:
• Max 4 GB
• a minimum resolution of 1920x1080 (Full HD), however a 2K resolution is preferred;
• a codec video: Apple ProRes 422HQ or Apple ProRes 444 / H264 (minimum bitrate 20Mbps);
• container video, prefered: .mov / .mp4;
6. All the films shot in a language other than Italian must have English or Italian subtitles.
Whenever possible, it is preferable that the subtitles, if necessary to the understanding of the selected film, are not burned in to the video. It is anyway mandatory to send the organizers the separate file with English and, if applicable, Italian subtitles.
7. If your film is selected to participate in the festival, please send us at least two pictures of your film, or any printable material or posters that can be used for promoting the film and the Festival (images must be in high resolution, jpeg format, maximum size 3 MB).
8. The submitter must own the intellectual property rights, or have licensed property rights, on the submitted film and on other complementary material about the film sent to the organizers. The submitter also certifies that all the images and scores used in the film are wholly original or that he/she has obtained any and all consents, releases, licenses, and other authorizations or waivers of any kind necessary for their inclusion or reproduction in the film. By submitting a film for Festival consideration, the submitter allows the promotion of the film on his/her behalf, the organization of multiple screenings, both open to the public and private, without any copyright infringement.
9. The submitter is the legal representative, both in civil and in criminal law, of the submitted film, and is liable for violations of the intellectual property rights of artistic content of others, present or mentioned, in full or partially, in the submitted film.
10. The submitter must not present films which contain material that defames or vilifies any person, people, races, religion or religious group and is not invasive of privacy or publicity rights, abusive, inflammatory or otherwise objectionable.
11. In order to submit a film for Festival consideration, you have to pay a submission fee, as indicated in the terms and conditions outlined on FilmFreeway: https://filmfreeway.com/festival/MalatestaShortFilmFestival. Please note that your fee is not refundable in any case. The submission fee will be considered a generic/voluntary donation and will be payed, net of deductions and transaction fees, to the association's PayPal account. The gathered sum will be used to constitute the prize and to support organizational expenses.
12. Deadlines for submission, Festival programs and dates might vary. All the communications to directors, distributors and other institutions will be sent via email.
13. All decisions made by the Artistic Direction, the Selection Committee and the judging Juries are at their sole and absolute discretion, and are final and unreviewable, especially as far as the selection decisions, the category in which the selected film will compete and the prize awards are concerned.
14. The Festival organizers cannot guarantee that all the submitted films will be selected for the Festival. Depending on the number of submissions, the organizers might be able to contact only the applicants whose film has been selected to participate in the Festival.
15. All the information provided, the guidelines for consideration and submission of the films, the submission terms and conditions might be subject to change on the part of the organizers without any previous notice.
16. In case your film is selected to participate in the Festival, you will have to:
• fill in, sign and send back to the organizers, either in hardcopy or digitally, the form you will receive.
• send the organizers a copy of a valid identification document;
• send the organizers the link to download the film you are submitting in high quality.
17. All the personal data present in the submission form and on the online submitting platform will be used according to the Italian law on the use of personal data (d.lgs 196/2003). The data provided will not be used or shared with anyone for commercial purposes. The data provided will only be used for the Festival's and Association's organizational purposes. These include the sending of information from the organizers about their events, the publication of contact information on the Festival website and on the printed material related to the Festival, the sending of new submissions calls, the selection of films to other film festivals or cultural events, etc.
18. By submitting a film for consideration to the Festival, the applicant allows the free use of the film, in case this is selected to participate in the Festival, and its screening in full during the Festival and other cultural events promoted by the Association and linked to the MalatestaShort Film Festival, together with the publication of the sent texts and the pictures related to the film on the festival catalogue, its website and social media pages. The selection of a film to the Festival also entails the sharing and/or streaming of the full trailer and of part of the selected film itself on the Festival website and its social media pages, as well as the sharing and/or streaming of any frame or digital video, titles, names of the accreditated parties or other material for solely promotional and organizational purposes.
19. The selected films will be saved in the digital archive of the "MalatestaShort Film Festival", where the films will be stored in off-line mode, classified and made available for the exclusive use of the organizers.
20. The selected films, subject to authorization by authors, might be stored in one or more copies on DVD or similar digital storage device, also after the end of the Festival, as exclusive property of the Association with the sole purpose of the circulation of culture or for educational purposes in events linked to the MalatestaShort Film Festival in any country of the world and for an unlimited amount of time, during cultural events and TV broadcasts.
21. Should any and all of the points of the present document lose their legal validity under one or more jurisdictions, this will not affect the validity of the same point under other jurisdictions, nor the validity of the other points of the present document under that very jurisdiction.
Should any notification on the points of the present Rules and Regulations be raised, the original Italian text will serve as evidence.
The applicant releases the Association, its members, the organizers and their partners from any and all civil or criminal dispute and to take on the subsequent legal costs, in case there should disputes on the aforementioned points arise.
Any dispute will be under the jurisdiction of the court in Forlì, Italy.
22. Submission of a film for consideration constitutes agreement to all rules, regulations and conditions contained in this document.