Short Film News - Kamran Shirdel, the Iranian veteran documentarist is to attend the international festival of Film Societies as a jury member to be held on 12-17 of June, 2006, in the historical city of Matera, south of Italy.

The festival is organized by Federazione Italiana Dei Circoli Del Cinema (Italian Federation of Film Societies) in cooperation with The International Federation of Film Societies, FICC/IFFS.

IFFS was founded by Cesare Zavattini, the famous Italian writer and scriptwriter and one of the founders of the famous Italian Neo-realism. 

Mr. Shirdel an old member- from the sixties- of the "Il Circolo di Charlie Chaplin", also founded and directed by Cesare Zavattini, is participating in this film festival for the 4th consecutive year and has become one of its essential members.

A full retrospective was dedicated to Kamran Shirdel in this festival 4 years ago, embracing all his old and new documentaries with debates and conferences about his works and style.

The IFFS is directed by Mr. Paolo Minuto who was also a jury member in the 6th KIDFF, 2005 (Kish International Documentary Film Festival), founded and directed by Kamran Shirdel.

IFFS awards the winners a statuette of Don Quixote. From this year on, the Don Quixote section will be a competitive one, and each delegate will have the right to vote to decide the winners. A documentary competitive section is also added to the main events of IFFS.

Iran is present in the 7th IFFS with Gilaneh directed by Rakhshan Bani Etemad.

The newly-added documentary competition jury includes Kamran Shirdel (Iran), Robert Richter (Switzerland), and Luigi di Gianni (Italy).

Matera's unique landscape was exploited by Pier Paolo Pasolini in the 1960s and by Mel Gibson in recent years, for their respective films on the passion of Christ.