Ruskino a Ca' Foscari festival goes online for its 10th edition

The 10th edition of Ruskino a Ca' Foscari, a festival of contemporary Russian cinema organized by the Centro Studi sulle Arti della Russia (CSAR) of Ca' Foscari University of Venice and the Russian Federation's Center for Film Festivals and International Programs, will be held entirely online from December 14 to 18, 2020, due to the COVID-19 emergency. Since 2011, the festival has screened Russian-language films with Italian subtitles. For six years, it has included a competition awarding Ca' Foscari students for best Italian subtitling, later extended to high school students through school-work alternation projects (now PCTO). This year, due to the pandemic, CSAR received hundreds of requests from high schools across Italy for its subtitling project, as well as for two other projects: "Organizzazione di Eventi Culturali" and "Educare con l'arte," a museum education workshop launched this year. CSAR created an entirely online package with tutorials by PhD students on technical aspects of subtitling, providing films without rights and scripts for students to practice, supervised by school tutors. Students in the event organization project are helping to produce the festival, which will be live-streamed on CSAR's YouTube channel. Afterwards, they will organize their own digital festivals at their high schools. Silvia Burini, professor of Russian art history and contemporary art history and director of CSAR, highlighted the festival's special role this year.