A new management team has been appointed to the Casa del Cinema in the Via Veneto corner of Villa Borghese, the city's premier destination for art-house, world and avant-garde foreign and Italian films.

New director Caterina D'Amico, previously head of Rai Cinema, has announced a restructuring of the management and administration of the organisation, which in future will have to rely less on municipal funds and therefore will have to seek private funding.

In a new departure, film festivals and exhibitions held at the Casa del Cinema will travel to various cultural venues outside the centre of Rome, opening up the medium of non-mainstream cinema to a wider audience in the suburbs. In addition there will be more emphasis on showcasing the films, documentaries and animation of young up-and-coming directors.

The next event on the Casa del Cinema calendar is on 14 February. It focuses on the work of actors who have become directors such as Kim Rossi Stuart, Alessandro Haber, Stefania Sandrelli and Luca Zingaretti). On 22 February the cinema screens a series of documentaries about Italy's past and present by Maurizio Di Rienza entitled In Questo Paese. Then on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy audiences can view 20 classics from Italian cinema, while the series of films in Rendezvous features an overview of contemporary movies from another European stronghold of cinema, France.

For more details see www.casadelcinema.it.

Casa del Cinema, Largo Marcello Mastroianni 1, tel. 06423601.