Società Cooperativa Mammutmedia

The Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica - International Exhibition Of Film Art organized by the Venice Biennale and this year in its 80th edition, has always been one of the most important events, at an international level, linked to the world of cinema.

Last year 2022, around 3,800 works entered the competition and were appropriately viewed by a group of experts, in charge of making the appropriate selection. Overall, more than 200 titles were presented in the various sections of the Festival, including retrospective and collateral sections.
These numbers give an idea of the complexity linked to the organization and management processes of an event of this magnitude.

All the complex procedures for selecting the titles in the competition, for the relative screenings in theaters and for the accreditation of the participants are still managed today (and for the twentieth consecutive year) with a series of applications, created by our group on behalf of the Biennale di Venezia Servizi S.p.a, taking full advantage of the ever more powerful and reliable Filemaker Pro database, which, during this long period, has been able to adequately support the ever-growing needs of this important event.

These modules allow, above all, to manage the considerable number of titles presented to compete for the Official Selection of the Exhibition. The titles and the relative characteristics (plot, actors, typology, duration, etc.) are entered directly by the users requesting the candidacy using a special form that takes advantage of the strong web capabilities of Filemaker Server 19. The titles thus received are carefully scrutinized by the official selectors , which decree the films in competition for the Golden Lion and for the side sections, including the one dedicated to the VR (Virtual Reality) section which has become, for some years now, another flagship of the Venice Film Festival.

FileMaker Pro also facilitates the selection and management of the large number of requests for participation and accreditation for the event. Also in this case, a series of web-forms have been prepared to manage the various types of requests and the upload of any necessary documentation (including photos and documentation of the applicants in digital format). The information received is all recorded and evaluated by the back office of the Exhibition and the accredited persons can finalize their request through an e-commerce procedure, also structured on the powerful and secure Filemaker Server web-engine.

Even the necessary procedures for printing and assigning the badges (with related SIAE taxation) are managed using the application created in Filemaker Pro, allowing for considerable savings in time and extremely easy processing of the card delivery procedures, a delicate moment for presence, at the counters, of an always potentially high number of waiting accredited customers.

Another function, the one that allows the offices to manage the hospitality procedures (including transfers and hotel reservations) in relation to the film delegations.

Finally, the management of projections in the various theaters (titles, calendars, intervals, movement of copies, etc.) is also supported by one of the modules of the aforementioned application, allowing the programming office to better organize the phases necessary for an orderly conduct of the exhibition.

The extreme flexibility of FileMaker Pro, therefore, has made it possible to keep all the workflows connected to the management of the Exhibition constantly under control in real time, thanks to the simplicity of the graphical interface and the rapid creation of lists and print reports.

Furthermore, the automated sending of e-mails directly from the application has further facilitated communication between the Biennale Cinema and accredited members, guiding the latter through the necessary procedural steps for sending requests. Finally, the dynamic creation of pdf documents allows for the automatic creation of a draft of the "Industry Guide", then printed in the typography and distributed in paper form to all accredited Industry and Professionals.