Editor

From the agreement of S. Pellegrino and the 65. Venice Film Festival, the project of the first ever award dedicated to social commitment has been established. It is a sort of “Nobel Prize” assigned to movie artists who devote themselves to humanitarian causes. The first edition of “Movie For Humanity Award” will be assigned to Natalie Portman, Sunday, August 31st during Kinéo Italian Movie Award (the yearly Audience Award) Night at the Hotel Des Bains, Visconti Hall.
Natalie will receive a beautiful trophy and a Check of §50.000,00. She will be devolving the donation to TACARE Girls’ Scholarship Program.

The award, which was inspired by Italian cinema traditional sensitivity towards social and political issues and by the serious involvement of artists all over the world, aspires to provide concrete support to their engagement in promoting human rights, peace and protect the environment, as well as for showing their compassion towards the plight of millions of children raised in poverty as well as the growing poverty in Third World countries, for speaking out about all those global plagues which cry for a decisive voluntary effort.

NATALIE PORTMAN and THE JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE’S TACARE Girls’ Scholarship Program

Raised to the role of international star thanks to her interpretation in the “Star Wars’ Trilogy”, Natalie is seriously involved in important social and environmental programs. Among them, the TACARE Girls’ Scholarship Program of The Jane Goodall Institute, a non-profit organization committed to wildlife research, education and conservation in Tanzania. The program was established to address the problem of severely limited educational opportunities for women in Kigoma district. Traditionally, girls throughout much of Sub-Saharan Africa, leave their parents’ home when they are married and become part of their husband’s family. Consequently the investment in a daughter’s education is too often seen as a waste of scarce resources. The Girls’ Scholarship Program provides access to secondary and higher education and consequentely job opportunities in a variety of fields
Natalie Portman has also been appointed Ambassador of Hope for FINCA, an organization operating to assure people microloans to start their activities.

Kinéo Italian Movie Award and S. Pellegrino will assign also the Hall of Fame Award to Dante Ferretti. With two Academy Awards (The Aviator and Sweemey Todd) and eight further nominations, he is the most popular production designer in Hollywood. For his latest job he designed the set of Shutter Island (temporary title) directed by with Martin Scorsese, with Leonardo Di Caprio, Ben Kinglsey, Max Von Sydow. He is also the creator of the set design of the Venice Film Festival.