The Abruzzi CSC campus was established in L’Aquila in 2011 thanks to an agreement between the Abruzzo Region, the Province, the City Council and the Ministry of Cultural and Touristic Affairs.

The three-year educational offer is destined to the future film makers who want to acquire highly specialised technical, artistic and professional skills in the field of audio-visual communication and, more specifically, in reportage movies. The training program focuses on the study and realisation of reportages through various languages: from writing to radio, from photography to video and web.

According to the tradition of the National Film School, teaching relies on practical workshops. Throughout the three-year program, students carry out practical exercises on the basis of what they’ve learned during lessons, and the process ends with the graduation film.

Lessons provide students with technical-practical skills to work on the creation of the film reportage and the audiovisual product.

Direction, writing, history of cinema, photography, shooting techniques, interviewing techniques, editing, sound, radio are the main subjects of the course. Conceiving an audiovisual project, setting up the search, elaborating the line up and, drawing up a working plan, visual and sound shooting, writing texts, editing are the activities that will contribute to devlop a professional profile.

From the first and second year works till the graduation film, workshops play a central role in students’ training. A film, an audio-documentary, a photographic and written reportage will be graduate students first portfolio.

School offers appropriate equipment and technologies for students’ exercises: audio and video recording tools, professional lighting, editing and post production studios, recording booth.

Students films have been mentioned and appreciated both in national and international festivals.

CSC promotes photographic and video competitions, photographic exhibitions, film reviews, public meetings on cinema and collaborates with local and national cultural events.

During the last five years the following professors have held classes: Daria Corrias (radio broadcasting), Paolo Ferrari (cinematography), Edgar Iacolenna (sound), Emiliano Mancuso (photography), Antonio Manca (writing), Tullio Masoni (Reality Cinema history), Stephen Natanson (directing), Luca Benedetti (editing), Massimo Raffaeli (cinema and literature), Giorgio Zanchini (journalism).

Francesca Mannocchi

Artistic Director Sede Abruzzo - Audiovisual Reportage Course

Francesca Mannocchi is an Italian journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker. She has been working with national and international newspapers for years.
Her work is focused on migration and conflicts. She reported from Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Turkey, Yemen, Ukraine, and Somalia.
She won several awards, including the 2016 Premiolino, the Premio Rizzi per il Giornalismo, and the 2022 European Award Investigative and Judicial Journalism. In 2018, along with photographer Alessio Romenzi, Mannocchi co-wrote and co-directed the documentary Isis, Tomorrow. The Lost Souls of Mosul, which premiered at the 75^th Venice Film Festival. In 2019, she published her debut novel, Io Khaled vendo uomini e sono innocente (Einaudi), the story of a trafficker of human beings, earning the Premio Estense. That same year, she described the conflicts in the Middle East in Porti ciascuno la sua colpa (Laterza) and published Libia (Mondadori), a work of graphic journalism illustrated by Gianluca Costantini. In 2021, Mannocchi published her sophomore novel Bianco è il colore del danno (Einaudi). In 2022, she carried off the Flaiano Award for Journalism and published Lo sguardo oltre il confine (DeAgostini), where Mannocchi for the first time narrates the current conflicts addressing the younger audiences.