25 films of less than half an hour in length are competing. Eight parallel sections will accompany the competition. From 26th July to 2nd August, the Venezuelan city of Barinas will be a capital of creativity for new Latino film-makers at the 2nd Annual Latin American Short Film Festival, being organized by the Distribuidora Amazonia Films. There will be 25 short films from 7 countries competing in the Official Section – works from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay and Venezuela – vying for two prizes of $5000 each, for the best animated film and the best live action film. The jury has also created a UNICEF Award for the short film which best contributes to the knowledge of the rights of children and their role in the defense of those rights. However, in addition to the contest section, up to eight parallel sections will offer a broad view of the short film format from around the world: Spanish short films selected by the ALCINE Festival of Alcala de Henares, a sampling of short films from the French Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival, the most prestigious in Europe for its genre, Italian films just one minute in length, recent productions from the Mexican IMCINE, a series dedicated to the works of the Chilean animated film-maker Tomas Welss, accompanied by a workshop, short films for children made by children with the backing of UNICEF, a sampling of the Venezuelan animator Armando Arce, also with a workshop offered, and, finally, a retrospective honoring the Venezuelan film-maker Jesus Enrique Guedez, who recently passed away. "This second film fiesta”, said festival director Erasmo Ramirez, “is testimony to and a promotional tool for new cinema, that which tells convincing, funny, powerful, moving and dramatic stories which will seduce Western banality. It will be a spectacle full of emotion and joy for the pleasure of the public”. The projections will be free-of-charge at the following locations: la Cinemateca Regional de Barinas, el Teatro Orlando Araujo, Cine Barinas and alternative open-air spaces. The second contest follows on from the first, which took place in Caracas, which was a great spectator success in 2006. The Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Cultura [Venezuelan Ministry of Culture] decided to decentralize the activity of promoting cinematographic culture, with the aim of involving other geographic regions of the country, and democratizing this cultural product in Venezuela. Thus, the plains city of Barinas, with a population of nearly 300,000, located 525 kilometers southwest of the capital, is the new home for the short film contest. The Fundacion Distribuidora de Cine Amazonia Films [Amazonia Films Film Distribution Foundation] organizes three important cinematographic events in Venezuela annually: the Festival de Documentales [Documentary Festival], the third year event of which took place last May in Caracas, this Festival Latinoamericano de Cortometrajes [Latin American Short Film Festival], now in its second year, and, finally, the new Festival de Cine del Sur [Southern Film Festival], devoted to feature-length fiction in the coastal city of Puerto la Cruz and will be from 26th October to 1st November this year.