Michele Placido presides over the Jury of the Mario Nascimbene Award for Film Music

Actor Michele Placido, director of "Romanzo criminale" - a strong and intense film on the Banda della Magliana, currently in cinemas - will be the President of the Jury for the Mario Nascimbene Award for film music, open to composers of all nationalities.
The final ceremony of the competition - promoted and organised by "MusicArte International" and the Municipality of Orsogna (Chieti), under the artistic direction of manager and musician Andrea Mascitti - will be held next Saturday, 26 November, at the "Camillo De Nardis" Theatre in Orsogna. The deadline for entries is 27 October. The winner will be awarded a €2,500 scholarship offered by ERREBIAN S.p.A. (www.errebian.it), together with a bronze sculpture and a recommendation to film production companies. The competition regulations are available on the website www.nascimbeneaward.net.
The award, now in its fourth edition, is dedicated to Mario Nascimbene (Milan 1913-Rome 2002), author of 400 soundtracks for Italian and international cinema films and directors such as Rossellini, Fellini, Antonioni, Vidor, Mankiewicz, Negulesco, Ustinov, Clayton and Cardiff. He was the first Italian composer invited to Hollywood.
Participants are asked to provide an unedited musical commentary for a few scenes - lasting about five minutes - from the film 'La Garçonnière' by Giuseppe De Santis, whose soundtrack was created by Nascimbene himself.
The five finalists will be chosen by a Selection Jury, chaired by Roberto Pregadio, composer and conductor, and formed by the publisher Franco De Gemini and Caterina Nascimbene, wife of the great composer and member of the jury of the Ente David di Donatello.
The winner, on the final evening open to the public, will be indicated by the award jury, which, together with Michele Placido, will include prestigious names from Italian music and cinema.
Such as Riccardo Giagni, composer of the soundtracks for several films by Marco Bellocchio (e.g. 'L'ora di religione' and 'Buongiorno, notte') and collaborator of directors such as Luciano Odorisio, Mimmo Calopresti, Carlo Lizzani and Sabina Guzzanti. In addition to Roberto Pregadio, there will also be Franco De Gemini, the doyen of Italian music editors and a great musician (it was he who played Charles Bronson's harmonica in 'Once Upon a Time in the West').
Completing the jury will be Angelo Privitera - lecturer at the Catania Conservatory, keyboard player, close collaborator and friend of Franco Battiato - and film critic Luca Bandirali, a careful scholar of Nascimbene's work.
Previous editions have included Nicola Piovani, Roman Vlad, Carlo Rustichelli, Luciano De Crescenzo, Alessandro Haber, Lino Patruno, and Mario Verdone, among others, on the Jury. Last year the prize was won by Federico Mantovani, 35, a composer from San Giovanni in Croce (Cremona). In 2003 it was won by Gabriele Bonolis from Rome, in 2002 by Giuseppe Palmeri from Mascalucia (Catania).