THE JURORS MEET THE AUDIENCE OF THE FESTIVAL
Roberta Torre, Hayashi Hiroki and Marvin Bortkiewicz describe their relationship with cinema through their works.
THE LAST SHORTS OF THE COMPETITION, THE OLGA BRUNNER LEVI COMPETITION AND THE SCIENTIFIC FILMS OF THE BEGINNING OF THE 18TH CENTURY
TONIGHT, THE PROCLAMATION OF THE WINNERS AND THE SHADOW ART SHOW BY SIMONA AND CARLO TRUZZI
Venice, March 24. Today at the eighth edition of the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival takes place the awaited Special Jury Program, an opportunity to get to know better the members of the international jury of this edition of the festival: Roberta Torre, Hiroki Hayashi and Marcin Bortkiewicz. Each director presents some extracts from their works to comment them together with the audience.
The first who takes the stage was the Italian director Roberta Torre, who presents extracts from her latest work, Richard goes to hell, a polished musical drama with Massimo Ranieri inspired by Richard III by William Shakespeare, which just won the David di Donatello prize for Costume Design and is curated by Massimo Cantini Parrini. Torre declares that in every film she made the relationship with music is really important, since the stunning debut Tano da morire. The director considers music as a poetic form and not just as a simple accompaniment; a vision that stands out even in the collaboration with Mauro Pagani for the writing of the songs of Richard goes to hell.
Then, we have the Japanese director and producer Hiroki Hayashi, who started his career as assistant directors for names like Takeshi Kitano and Kiyoshi Kurosawa, but his passion for cinema began when he saw for the first time Cinema Paradiso, declaring that this movie made him feel a special bound with Italy.
As shown in many of his feature movies, the territory and the local communities are the main protagonists. For example, there is Soul Journey – To the future of Nanto, shown together with other trailers selected by the author. The land stands for the past and – Hayashi explains – it reflects on our future, and so it is important to value it. For this reason, the director tries to involve the local communities with the aim to make them aware towards the topics he faces in his films. Finally, the Polish Marcin Bortkiewicz, cinema and theatre director, whose poetry dedicates a special attention to women’s world. For him, women are more complex subjects than men, and because of this, more interesting. His career in the theatrical field has – without any doubt – influenced his work as director, «I decided to be an actor to understand as a director what it really feels like to act on the stage» says Bortkiewicz. Moreover, he admits that all his theatrical works are influenced by cinema and vice versa. Early Learning – the documentary shown during the program – tells the story of a student of oceanography who teaches a seal born in captivity how to survive in its natural habitat. However, for the director, defining his project a “documentary” is quite limited because his movies don’t follow the strict patterns of this category and the work links together reality and fiction.
This evening, during the closing ceremony, the jury will announce the winner of the International Competition and other prizes. Before that, though, the last short films in the competition will be shown starting from the animation Sea by the Belarusian director Marharita Tsikhanovich, where the choice of black and white and the use of traditional music strengthens even further the protagonist’s sense of melancholy, a man who’s alone in the sea of life. Mama, by the Uzbek directors Abduazim Ilkhomjonov and Botir Abdurakhmonov, is a story that portrays the consequences of the horrors of the Second World War, where a woman will become mother of the four orphan children entrusted to her. The following short is Çıkmaz, by the Turkish director Yasin Dalgiç, where the narration focuses on the story of an old freed prisoner who casually finds a girl’s corpse in the parking lot where he works. The short film shown next is Yong Bao Chang Jiang, by the Chinese director Ao Ma, the story of an insecure boy who fears interpersonal relationships and who will try, with the help of his mother, to escape his online gaming addiction and virtual life, even if the real world seems anything but accessible. Finally, Lobis, by the Lithuanian Martynas Valius, who tells the story of a treasure found at the bottom of a pond. The protagonist, the doctor Jeronimas, also involves the villagers in the treasure’s recovery, without knowing for sure what they will find.
During this last day, the last two special programs are presented, the High School Contest Olga Brunner Levi and Fantastic science. The first one is a prize created in 2014 by the Levi Foundation and it is for high school students from all the world, who had to create short movies having as main object a female music performance or the relationship between the woman condition and music throughout history. The winner short, which will be chosen between the finalist five ones by a technical jury, will be announced tonight. To revive the last day of the Festival, there also will be Fantastic Science, the special program edited by Carlo Montanaro, a cinema of the origins expert and usual collaborator of the Festival. Montanaro presents a selection of 16 short movies, most of which from the beginning of the 20th Century, which have as fil rouge the disclosure of particularly hard to demonstrate scientific phenomena and that cinema made them “magically” possible to happen. Between these short movies there are also high speed clips of bullets which go through the soap bubbles of Lucien Bull and high speed videos on the growth of plants and flowers. There are even works of two cinema pioneers like Jules E. Marey and Georges Méliès.
The great final tonight of Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival will be in the hands of the masters of shadow art Simona and Carlo Truzzi, Italian artists able to create amazing figures (portraits of famous singers, actors and other celebrities) just with their hands, a frame and a spotlight, thanks to which the shadows will appear as ‘full’ as ever.
