Documentando is born, an on-demand platform (for free!) all dedicated to Italian documentaries

It was launched last December 15 Documentando. Italian Documentary Archive, an on-demand digital platform entirely dedicated to Italian documentaries. It is a project for the preservation and viewing of national documentaries conceived by the Associazione D.E-R Documentaristi dell’Emilia Romagna in collaboration with the Emilia Romagna Region and the Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna, and can be reached at documentando.org. There are already 160 titles online, available for anyone who wants to see them: these are documentaries made by Italian authors starting from the early 2000s (but there are also some earlier titles), organized in nine thematic areas: Environment, Art and Architecture, Biography, Culture and Traditions, Politics, Society, Entertainment and Music, Sports, and History.

Each documentary is accompanied by a fact sheet with information on the author, cast, synopsis, production and distribution. The films are freely accessible and visible to all, including from abroad, without territorial restrictions. Documentando will be continuously updated, “with the ambitious goal,” explains the Emilia Romagna region in a note, “of becoming an authoritative point of reference in the world of archiving and dissemination of documentary films, and an important source for scholars, students, and professionals in the field, where they can retrieve documentation and archive images. Collaborations with foreign countries are also already in the pipeline, particularly with Spain, with which the promoters are working to publicize and expand the project.”

“The aim,” reads the project website, “is to create a virtuous circuit between authors and users through the new online streaming platform and partnership operations with cinemas and television circuits. Direct collaboration with authors will ensure the continuous expansion of the archive during the coming years by ensuring an increasingly varied and multicultural proposal. Documentando.org will offer a virtually unlimited space in which to store works, electing as one of its main goals the preservation of the memory of regional and national documentary filmmaking and thus of memory by images tout court. Subject to the strict observance of copyrights this large archive may become an important source for scholars, students, porfessionals in which to retrieve documentation and archive images.”

For the art section present some titles such as Perino del Vaga pittor fiorentino. Between Raphael and Michelangelo by Dario Zanasi (2002), dedicated to the important figure of Perin del Vaga, one of the great masters of early Mannerism, and then Aldo Rossi. The Theater of the World, 1979-2004 (2004), an in-depth look at the architect’s life and works, Francesco Barilli’s The Ducal Palace and Bertoja in Parma (2005), an account of the history of Parma’s Ducal Palace and the artists who frescoed it. And again Pietre vive - l’abbazia di Nonantola (2019), a visit to the heritage of the ancient monastic complex, In volo con l’ippogrifo (2015), dedicated to the museums of Ferrara, Amedeo Bocchi (2013), a documentary about one of the great artists of the late 19th century, Bologna futurista 15 giorni prima, 100 anni dopo (2009) and much more.

The Documentando.org project was created by inheriting and developing the functions and objectives of the previous Documentando.com project, created in 2006 by D.E-R in collaboration with the Emilia-Romagna Department of Culture, the Emilia-Romagna Film Commission and the Video Library of the Legislative Assembly of the Emilia-Romagna Region. In the coming months it will be expanded with the implementation of additional services, such as digitizing materials in obsolete formats (U-Matic, BetaCam, VHS) and transforming them into files suitable for streaming for films on DVD or Blue Ray support, so as to include less recent works as well, ensuring an increasingly varied and extensive proposal.

Documentando is born, an on-demand platform (for free!) all dedicated to Italian documentaries

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