Giorgio Carpinteri’s “yellow skeletons” dance on the stage for the Short Film Festival
AMONG THE SHORT FILMS IN THE COMPETITION, THE ITALIAN NEITHER READ NOR WRITE WITH ROBERTO CITRAN
And more: the sand artist Iimen Masako, The suspended glace on Italian video-art, the workshop Anymation, the homage to the “Pasinetti” VideoContest and the ‘played’ cinema of the Video-oke!
16th March is the day when one of the main guests of this edition Giorgio Carpinteri will make his appearance on the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival. Renowned for his unique artistic style, the Italian artist has been selected to produce the poster for the seventh edition of the Festival. Together with the special program The world of Giorgio Carpinteri (at 7 PM), Davide Giurlando will interview him to retrace the creative path that has made him one of the main protagonists of the Italian comic field in the new wave, as well as one of the authors of the Italian overview. Carpinteri, who received his degree at DAMS in Bologna, obtained his education particularly to the role in melting pot, which was represented by the Emilian county seat during those years. The author cultivates a view of the comics as an explosive work and as a product of the shatter of barriers among the different creative worlds. His career started with his debut in 1980, with his story L’uomo non visibile (The invisible man), with Incrocio magico (Magic meeting) and with the birth of the Valvoline Motorcomics group in 1983, at the forefront in the field of comics composed by young authors who have the desire of “changing everything”. During the same period, in addition to taking part of the Valvoline group on the comic supplement in Alter Alter, Carpinteri collaborates with Linus and works for one of the most visionary and postmodern works: Polsi sottili (Thin wrists), which is the longest story by Carpinteri. Still active as an artistic director, painter as well as an author of television programs, posters and advertising campaigns, the Hde Gallery of Naples has dedicated Capinteri the Yellow skeletons on 2016.
Thirteen short films are competing at the International Contest planned on 16th March (at 4 PM and at 8 PM), beginning with the Ukrainian director Dariya Baranova who participates on Operatsiya “Zhe”, a mocking and ironic fiction inspired by the story of Anton Čechov who wants to overturn the commonplace that sees a woman relegated to a passive role in the marriage tradition. The short film of the English George Graham, Amygdala, presents a female character who gets a strong impact from the city. An intimate and nostalgic path in which Belle re-experiences her memories with her ex-girlfriend, recollecting with the public how a passed love always remains present as a shadow. There’s a radical change of the atmosphere in Visitor by Stef de Hoog, Belgian director coming from the LUCA school of Bruxelles, and who denounces the Hungarian regime of Szalasi, which in 1944 made a thousand Roms depart from the boundary between Germany. Made with a strong theatrical style and set in a single room, three different heroes are discussing and defending their own position, recalling in some ways the present situation. Looking for another truth, the Polish director Ena Kielska realised Śledztwo – The Inquest, a short film in black and white made of dark tones that paints a surreal portrait, presenting the grotesque in the modern society. The researches on the sudden disappearance of some inhabitants from a little village set in the middle of nowhere, bring a private investigator to discover the darkest sides of the human mind. The short film indeed inserts itself in a current of “revenge” Korean films Nas Neum akda (I saw it) that tells the swindle conceived from a mother and her daughter against a young boy who has unfairly been accused of molesting the little girl and subjected to the payment of a penalty for not being incriminated. Hae-seong Jeong, director and interpreter of the story, wishes to condemn the egoism and the cruelty of those people who take advantage of their neighbours for achieving their own cynical goals. The first part of the Contest is going to close with Neither read nor write by the Italian director Edoardo Ferraro from CSC of Rome, and Roberto Citran. Throughout the character of Italo, a boy that comes from the Marche and who works as an assistant at RAI, this short film offers a portrait of a cruel reality, giving new dimensions to talent and ambitions of young men who try to face that reality with their head held high.
The second part of the International Competition, which begins at 8PM, will show the audience and the jury a selection of seven countries and seven different points of view of the world. Iran begins with an animated short movie, Ektesabat-e Etnesab, by director Samaneh Shojaei: the cynic and ironic thoughts of a man who, unable to bear with the physical defects which link him with his family, decides to kill himself, only to discover that fate doesn’t lack a sense of irony. There is another director for the nocturnal illustration of Next, the Russian Elena Brodach: no dialogues, a single tracking shot to display the split reality of an artist who wants to sculpture the nude shape of her sleeping-lover, chosen as the victim on the altar of her own art. Moving on with an amusing work by the Spanish Ignacio Malagòn, El sueño espacial, we see a humanistic remake of the scene fiction genre: a well-known and great NASA astronaut reveals to a reporter a clamorous secret: he has always been suffering from narcolepsy. How could he make his dream of a space travel come true? Back to Earth, with the cynical and ruthless India of Dead End by Rakesh Kumar, we see a boy stopped by a policeman while going out from a brothel, forced to give up his own body exchange for his silence; the research for a freedom from this pain will blow up everything into a tragedy. A strong denounce about power abuses, made by great close-ups; a denounce which comes back also in the short Enzo, by the Brazilian director Daniel Souza Duarte de Sena: a series of repetitions and perceptive distortions tell the story of a young man unable to tell reality from traumatic memories of an undefined past; will the help of his brother be enough to save him from himself and from a society which only sees his mental illness? Loneliness and alienation are the main point of the short Konstruktor, by the director Piotr Dylewski: Victor, creator of androids, gets himself out from society to live with the beautiful and apathetic gynoid Eve. Reprogramming her “feelings” could help her break the routine, but can the complexity of the human being be created in a laboratory?
The night will be concluded with gloomy tints, with the black and white of the last short, the Czech Jàma – The Pit by Filip Kiliàn: during the Second World War, an American doctor meets with a German soldier in a ditch and faces his unconceivable request to kill him. A striking episode to conclude the night in the name of the paradox.
Another highlight of tomorrow is The World of Iimen Masako, a monographic focus dedicated to the Japanese artist (at 6PM) renowned worldwide for her works of sand animation, who will also perform live scheduled during the closing ceremony. While attending Musashino Art University, Iimen falls deeply in love with the world of sand art, thanks to the work of the Canadian artist Caroline Leaf. Later, she collaborated with the “god of manga” Osamu Tezuka, who defined her works as “full of love”. The sand art, a technique which the artist has been working with for years, consists of drawing directly on the sand with fingers on top of a backlit glass display. Everything is shot with a technique similar to stop motion. During the Short Film Festival some of her best animations will be shown, for instance the famous closing theme of the anime “Kimagure Orange Road” from 1987.
There will also be the 4th edition of the special program The suspended glance by Elisabetta Di Sopra. Alessandra Arnò, co-founder of Visualcontainer, an Italian archive which promotes, distributes and spread the Italian video art, presenting six of her works proposed with Paolo Simoni. The selection moves through extreme digital sceneries to come to the narration and the classical experimentation. In Rides by Flavio Scutti, the memories are far away as dreams and they want to reveal something about the future by the stratification of images. This stratification is also found in Weltanschauung by Matteo Pasin, where, through a Google Maps function, it is possible to visualize and chronologically stratify all the archived images from 2001 until today. Among the works shown there will also be: 010 by Riccardo Muroni, Dream machine by Alessandra Caccia, Pic-nic by Barbara Drugola and Trond Arne Vangen and Slow by Enzo Cillo.
Another regular program is the workshop Anymation, curated by Davide Giurlando and dedicated to international animation cinema. This year the main theme will focus on how animation has risen to become “contemporary poetess of Chaos”. Creativity and folly in animation has distinguished grand and refined live cinema. During this edition, the Festival will present works from a variety of authors, from Bruno Bozzetto to the Zagabria School of Animation, which starts developing in the Fifties with the creation of economical commercial campaigns and aim to criticise consumerism and artificial desires that bring men to social alienation.
Another traditional collaboration between Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival and “Francesco Pasinetti” VideoContest is renewed to present a selection of videos and winners of the 13th edition, dedicated to the main theme of Venice as a crossroads of culture, art, history and memory. All of these clearly appear in the works Flow by Giorgio Costantini and A Thousand Steps in Venice (Mille Passi a Venezia) by the Class 2C of Liceo Artistico “Guggenheim” under the coordination of Prof. Luisa Querci della Rovere. The Festival observes the fresh and genuine eyes of the young and, at the same time, through the more attentive and matured expert filmmakers to find innovation and preserve the delicate habitat of the city. Together with the works mentioned above, Assenzio (Absinthe) by Stefano Canavese, Lia by Arianna del Grosso, Camper by Alessandro Tamburini, and Al giorno d’oggi (To This Day) by Asia La Fratta will also be screened.
Finally, the special program Video-oke! is back to revisit the famous karaoke, only substituting movie clips to songs. For this year’s edition, the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival, in collaboration with several high schools of the province of Venice, will present a ludic approach to the audio-visual medium. This way, everybody can play with cinema, introducing new ways to get cinema closer for the youth to practice in an innovative way.
