FIRST DAY OF CA’ FOSCARI SHORT FILM FESTIVAL 10
HEARTBREAKING STORIES ABOUT ESCAPES AND SEPARATIONS IN THE SHORT FILMS OF THE COMPETITION, FROM MEXICO TO JAPAN
CHARLIE TANGO PRESENTS THE PILOT EPISODE OF HIS NEW SERIES ON THE IRREVERENT PUPPETS FROM THE MUNCHIES
MARIE ELISA SCHEIDT COMES BACK TO VENICE TEN YEARS AFTER WINNING THE FIRST EDITION OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
FOUR WORKS FROM SOUTHEASTERN ASIA PROTAGONISTS OF EAST ASIA NOW
SHORTS FILMS BY THE STUDENTS OF THE FRENCH ANIMATION SCHOOL SUPINFOCOM RUBIKA
WORKS BY THE YOUNG STUDENTS OF THE “FILMS IN VENICE & FILMING VENICE” SUMMER SCHOOL
The opening day of the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival 2020 began with the Films in Venice and Filming Venice program, presenting works by young international students of Ca’ Foscari Summer School 2019, which coordinated other four Universities partners in the project: the IUAV, the Tel Aviv University, the Wasoeda in Tokyo and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Monaco. The presentation was held at the beautiful Archaeological Museum of Venice, one of the prestigious institutions supporting the festival in this “widespread” edition. For the second year in a row, the programme was once again advocate for the theoretical and practical approach applied to the relation between Cinema and the city of Venice, aiming to create a group of thirteen “budding directors”. The strenght of the programme lies in the multidisciplinary approach based on the interaction between the international students and the experts from the involved institutions. The multiple perspectives of the young students generated original works with diverse contents that were screened today: Photo Trip by Ori Wolf, Monique Pisani, Azumi Sakamoto, Inbar Markfield; Incontro by Ching-Ying Huang, Umayma Diab, Sophie Herzner, Xiaoyang Yue; The Bite by Milena Plach, Nora Meisser, Ang Li, Moselle Kleiner, Yanhe Wang.
The Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival, which has always been attentive to animated cinema, presented then a special focus on the prestigious French school Supinfocom Rubika, located on four campuses around the world in Canada, Kenya, India and France. Founded in 1988, L’École Supérieure d’Informatique de Communication Supinfocom trains young talents in the fields of animation, industrial design and videogames. Mine de Plomb, O28, The Stained Club, Trois Francs six sous, Overrun, Tant que nos coeurs battent, Sans gravitéand Gunpowder are the short films that were screened today and that represent some of the most meaningful and awarded works produced in the last three years. The short films of the Supinfocom Rubika are the result of collective work projects, that share an amazing desire to experiment in creating new worlds such as the adventurous journey, both physical and mental, of an ant in Overrunand that of a young couple into the unknown in O28.
Stefano Locati has then introduced the East Asia Now program, which was developed by Stefano himself and is dedicated to short films from that specific area of the Asian continent. The four short films of this selection share odd perspectives, fresh and stimulating atmospheres, and they take inspiration from ordinary situations which then, little by little, unveil their inner nonsense. The power these productions hold lies in how their directors have decided to create them. All four of them, as a matter of fact, have accepted the challenge to create low-cost short films, often taking advantage of crowdfunding. These directors have already presented their pieces of work in many international festivals, from Cannes to Singapore, before arriving at the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival. Pham Thien An, in his Stay Awake, Be Ready, turns a normal conversation among friends into a world full of imaginative details and cryptic thoughts. Kris Ong, on the other hand, sets her Sundayin Singapore; this short film tells the story of a woman who creeps into her sister and her boyfriend’s relationship. Very soon, the plot, which may at first glance seem linear, becomes contaminated by pressing presences, family hysteria and torturous desires. Dossier of the Dossieris a reflection on the difficult world of indie cinema: a limbo of dreams, expectations, and harsh reality. Sorayos Prapapan, its director, has chosen to blend black and white colours together to portray this realistic and personal slice of human life. Finally, California Dreamingby Cambodian director Sreylin Meas, is a short film characterised by obscure shades. It narrates the encounter between two strangers and their relationship, which becomes more and more intense as time passes. This makes reality surrounding them rarefied and, magically, even the one in front of the spectator’s eyes.
The 10th edition of the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival was officially inaugurated in the Auditorium Santa Margherita, where the new University rectoress Tiziana Lippiello, the Festival’s director Roberta Novielli and the director of Venice Foundation Giovanni Dell’Olivomade an institutional welcome speech. A video message of the President of Veneto Region Luca Zaia was also added. After the inauguration, the preview of the pilot episode of the new The Munchies’s show was shown. Charlie Tango himself, co-creator with his brother Miki, introduced the serie on the stage of the Auditorium. They created those famous puppets, cult of the early 2000s Italian television, which went on air on Italia 1 and MTV channels between 2003 and 2010. Sarcastic, humorous and vaguely subversive, the three protagonists – Pasquale, Miki and Nonna Yolanda – come back on screen with Doppia Canna(this is the name of the pilot), which will be soon released on the web and on dedicated channels.
Among the important guests of this first day, there was also the winner of the first memorable edition of the International Competition in 2011, the German documentary filmmaker Marie Elisa Scheidt, who achieved success in her country with works focused on marginal communities in order to give them voice and resonance. Through the Lens of Inkedkenny,Sobota andHoly F%&#are three of the shortfilms, that she realised in this decade since her victory at the Festival and they were projected today, after winning numerous awards in many International festivals. These works express Scheidt’s investigation into a humanity made of outcasts and repulsive characters and analyze the role of the individual in contemporary society.
The day ended with the first six short films of the International Competition, consisting of thirty works by young directors coming from film schools across the world to represent as many as 27 countries. To open the dances was Locomotor, Japanese production of Kaneko Isaku, a student of Tama Art University, and that is referred to as an animation short film that stages, without the need of dialogues, a steam train anthropomorphized, and investigates through it the problems of the contemporary world speed. Terre ferme, a french short film of fiction directed by Ivän James Hayward, narrates, instead, Émile’s life, a guy who lives unhappily on their parents’ farm in France in the ‘50. His ambitions of freedom are constantly frustrated by his father’s education, until one day he has the chance to escape: a young pilot named Jacques, the brother that Émile never had, with whom he hopes to take the flight. Värvid must-valgel(Black and White Colours), is instead an Estonian short film by the young director German Golub, and stages the life of a woman – Paula –and her uncertainties through the epochal technological change ocurred in the ’70: the transition from black and white screen to technicolor. Such event exacerbates the woman’s most intimate fear, the ageing, bringing out her others anxieties and inequalities. The short film was produced by the autor in the context of the Baltic Film, Media, Arts and Communication School.
Three shorts at the end of the program have distinguished themselves for the original and struggling stories they bought on the festival screens. Eked by Hüsnegül Çelik, a Turkish director from Anatolian University, tells the audience about Zeliha, a midwife, and about her pain caused by the impossibility of realizing her wish to become a mother. An unfortunate event in her village seems to bring some hope to her and her husband, who could finally build a family together. The happiness that overwhelms their hearts will soon turn out to be just temporary.The Antidote by the Chinese director Wang Cheng En from the National Taiwan University of Arts, brought in Venice Xiuzhen’s story, not only a nurse, but a mother first. One day, her daughter is admitted in critic conditions in the hospital where she works. The only hope for her it’s a medicinal product, whose limited availability will lead the women to take unexpected choices that will make her question everything. At the end of the day, we had Sonreír by Francisco Fernández Andrew from Mexico (Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica) with the story of Fabián Aguirre, a professional killer, but also a great fan of comedy. These two lines will cross dramatically when the man finds himself forced to kill the “Cuquis”, the last great Mexican comedian, for which he feels unbridgeable esteem and admiration.
