News


  • 22 March 2018

A JOURNEY THROUGH EUROPE, AMERICA AND ASIA: SHORTS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION THROUGH DOCUMENTARY, ANIMATION AND FICTION

A JOURNEY THROUGH EUROPE, AMERICA AND ASIA: SHORTS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION THROUGH DOCUMENTARY, ANIMATION AND FICTION

THE SUSPENDED GLANCE ITALIAN VIDEO ART PROGRAM

THE TRIBUTE TO THE VIDEOSELECTION ‘PASINETTI’

 Venice, March 22nd. The second day of the eight edition of Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival opens with the special program dedicated to the VideoSelection “Francesco Pasinetti”, a long-standing partner of the festival, which has reached its 15^ edition. The aim of this project, born in Venice, is to promote and increase local cinematographic activities, and to develop topics of intergenerational and intercultural dialogues, pleasant cohabitation and sustainable tourism, and it is addressed in particular to local young filmmakers. This year’s selection includes the screening of the book trailers – brilliant few-minutes video in which young filmmakers narrate a book using images –, selected for the “Bruno Rosada” Award, such as The name of Rose by Elena Carraro and A fish on the tree, made by The Spallanzani Institute of Mestre. The screening program also includes the section “Venezia una città”, during which Exterminating Angel, by Philippe Apatie, has been presented and Veludere by Angela M. L. Colonna.

In collaboration with several secondary schools of the province of Venice, for its eight edition, Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival again offers the special program Video-oke!, during which it has been requested to the young participants to re-dub some scenes taken from famous movies: indeed, the experiments consists in replacing actors’ voices with their own voices, during a live performance.

The video-art program Lo sguardo sospeso, edited by Elisabetta Di Sopra with the collaboration of Alessandra Arnò, co-funder of Visualcontainer, has proposed a selection which involves and links past and present in a narrative continuity recognizable in a way, but at the same time different from its classical meanings. The video-art has the extraordinary ability to make feelings of human beings immediate, even the more hidden ones, thanks to its amazing expressive characteristic. Between the presented projects there is Alla salute! by Davies Zambotti, which intents is the one of let us cheers to the cacophony of everyday life, to the words and situations obliterated by different sound layers. Then No more upgrade by Sonia Armaniaco follows, in which the human eternal greed for power resounds through the images and noises of nuclear explosions. After that, the project 00:00:01:00 by Eleonora Roaro is presented, an installation composed by seven video-performances with the duration of one second each. Set in different Cornwall prehistoric sites, it represents the fragility and ephemeral as metaphor of the Earth evolution. In the short The sky is fallin, loop by Barbar and Ale – Barbara Ceriani Basilico, Alessandro Mancassola – the whiteout of the snow on the Switzerland Alps, the wind which lashes and an iced lake create an imaginative and voiced dialogue with a lonely, insecure,   man who plays a metallic vibraphone, trying in a vane way to keep the control over an oppressive, white and decadent world. Green gold by Micol Roubini and Lorenzo Casali takes up a Finnish slang expression, “Green gold”, which identifies the richness of the forest, a treasure that it is often taken for granted, as well as constantly modified bu human action. In Your body is your Buddha, Eleonora Roaro wants to demonstrate through choreographies how body is the maximum expression of nature and, for this reason, it is simulacrum of the karmic process. In Cross Broadway, the author Valentina Miorandi improvises herself in order to find the Manhattan pulsating heart and she does so through a succession of lights, icons, antonym figures. Limite by Debora Hirsch closes the program, in this short the artist produces three aftermath teasers of the Brasilian movie Limite by Mario Peixoto, created using the original sounds and images of the movie, but in three different styles.

The short movies of the second day of the International Competition are a trip between Europe, America and Asia. The first short movie came from Germany, as his director, Lukas März, native of Munich, author of Freie Kamera, which is the story of Ernst Schmid, a filmmaker who has stop his new film shooting to assist his badly ill wife. Despite this, his passion for direction led him to keep shooting his documentary, going on the sets where he worked as operator for Babaria Studios. Bérénice Motais de Narbonne made the French animator Astrale. The main character is Magda, a 13-years-old girl who has the ability to become an astral projection and leaving her own body to travel through her inner world, a world populates by strange but fascinating creatures who makes her doubt her identity and her sexuality. After that, we travelled to California with Night Call by Amanda Renee Knox, which tells the story of a policewoman, mother of two children, who, during a patrolling, start chasing after some young hooligans: this will lead her to make a decision which will change her life forever. Then, it was the turn of one of the Italian short movies of the Competition, Adavede by Alain Parroni, which follows a young girl from the Roman suburbs who has always her phone in hand. Unexpectedly, she met a deer and tried to picture it, but her phone switched off. The only things left is a memory. It starts then a journey through her daily life, from the woods to the urban outskirt. Huándăo gōnglù by Adam Young, coproduction between China and Hong Kong, is focused on a video and a gun. A special news correspondent, sent to an island not far from the Chinese continent to write an article, has to relate with the captain of the island’s security, a boy and his mother.

Today there was also the screening of five other short films participating in the International Competition. The first, A(U)N, by the Indian filmmaker TS Prasanna, tells the story of a photographer who encounters a native during a naturalistic itinerary. When he tries to take a picture of the native, the latter initially exchanges the camera for a weapon, but then he’s intrigued by the strange object and decides to follow the photographer. The second film screened was Pipinara, by the Italian director Ludovico Di Martino. Focused on the unresolved murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini, the short is told from the killers point of view, a group of boys from the Ostia of the 70’s, a society that the director had loved so much and considered as the last form of pure civilization, not yet corrupted by bourgeois consumerism. The short film Abandon, by the young Indian director Varun Chopra, also displays a melancholy tone: it tells us a compelling story starring Austin, a problematic teenager who meets Faith, a 9-year-old girl with whom he decides to join a gang to perform a robbery. Ayerim Villanueva, from Costa Rica, is the director of Elena: a film that, investigating the theme of love, focuses on the freedom of a woman who, after being shunned by her family, decides to experiment with her own sexuality. The last short film of the day was Roditeli priekhali ko mne na Shri-Lanku, by the Russian director Vera Vodynski. It talks about the life of Alex, a man who lives spending his parents’ money and is upset by their sudden arrival, which coincides with the mystical revelation of the local divinity Shamka.

In the evening two of the most awaited special programs of this edition will take place, starting with the masterclass by the great Britannic cineast Peter Greenaway who will be presented by the pro-rector Flavio Gregori. Before the program there will be a focus on the Indian animator Gitanjali Rao who gave a big contribution to this kind of art in her country. The animator will present her five short movies, which have ‘her’ Bombay as background and they talk about adult and unusual themes for the animation cinema: a satire of Bollywood in True Love Story (2014), immigration in Chai (2013) and the female universe in Blue (2009), Orange (2006) and Printed Rainbow (2006), which has won the prize for the Best Short movie at Cannes Festival.

 

Loading