DESIRE ON THE MOVE: WHEN LAUREL AND HARDY SERVE THE ADVERTISEMENT WORLD AND OTHER RÉCLAME OF THE SILENT CINEMA
CLOSING CEREMONY WITH AWARDS AND LIVE PERFORMANCE BY THE SAND ARTIST IIMEN MASAKO.
And More: the last works of the Contest, the finalists of the Veneto Contest, the “Olga Brunner Levi” Award and the tribute to Quindici19
Venice, 17th March 2017. Tomorrow, Saturday 18th March is the final day for the seventh edition of Ca Foscari Short Film Festival, with the awaited Desire on the Move (at 4PM), a special program edited by Carlo Montanaro, director of La Fabbrica del Vedere, proposing an amazing panoramic view on the variety of cinema from the origins, this year focusing on the advertisement word. Montana, who is a veteran collaborator of the Short, dedicates this section to the very first advertisement of silent cinema, underlying a persuasive ability and enchanting feeling on the audience from these first tools of visual promotion. During the program, there will be rare testimonies from the first productions such as Charcuterie mècanique (1896) by Luis Lumière, Blacksmith (1893) and Three American Beauties (1906), both produced by Edison. We will then move on to the examples from the ‘20s, such as Newman Laugh-O-Grams (1921) by Walt Disney, Der Sieger (1922) and Das Wunder (1922) produced by Walter Ruttmann, and finally to the ones for the MGM by Stanlio and Ollio during the ‘30s.
During the closing ceremony (from 7.30PM), the awards for the seventh edition of the Ca Foscari Short Film Festival will be presented in uplifting excitement together with the live performance of the Japanese sand artist Iimen Masako. Sand art is a form of art of great visual impact, with the artist’s fingers telling a story through the movement of san on backlit glass. The stunning union between grace of movements and illustrations creates a breath-taking effect.
During the Awards Ceremony, the International Contest will present the Great Prix for the best short film and the Volumina Special Mention for the work which offers the best contribution to cinema as art. The awards will be assigned by the jurors Catherine Breillat, Małgorzata Zajączkowska and Barry Purves. In addition, the “Pateh Sabally” award by the Municipality of Venice, Burano and Murano will award a work which offers the best contribution to themes with multi-ethnicity, and in the end, the Levi Award will be assigned to the best soundtrack by the jurors Luisa Zanoncelli. Roberto Calabretto and Gabriele Roberto. For the Veneto High Schools’ Competition, the Veneto Contest Award and a Special Mention will be awarded by the “Pasinetti” VideoContest.
The International Contest is coming to an end with the final works screened from 2PM, starting off with the delicate and surreal animation: Feed. Feed is the graduation work by the Japanese director Eri Okazaki, coming from the inspiration from her solitary childhood; this short film shows enormous creatures measuring time, adults cooking for their children in an apathetic atmosphere which reflects a sterile everyday life, until the swan song of the meal resounds as a lively moment. Thankamma, an essential and precise documentary by the Indian director Rambhadran B., will lead us to the stunning landscape of Alappuzha, the “Venice of the East”: a ninety-years-old widow, Thankamma, brings across the river the habitants of two towns, who would otherwise be isolated, fighting with determination a daily battle for her and the others to survive. A figure proud of poverty, loneliness, and political activism, which will not let the watcher look away. Difficult love and family relationships, fragility, uncertainties: Dong, by Nelicia Low from Singapore, shows us a love triangle between Hui, a middle-aged woman in need of affection, her husband, who gets home later and later ‘because of his work’, and her brother, who suffers from autism and is only able to say ‘yes’. This falsified, insane and gloomy reality was inspired by the director’s childhood and her difficult relationship with her autistic brother. Here, male characters turn into means to satisfy the main character’s need of love. Then comes Hunting Day, a cruel fight of characters who almost lose their humanity. The Latvian director Ivo Skanstiņš gives up dialogues and directs the story of the father of a poor family who was killed during a hunt. Without a guide, the adults withdraw into themselves and into silence; it’s up to the daughter to take a wild revenge. The paradox of the ending will consecrate an instinctive woman’s strength against the loss of innocence driven by hunger and desperation in an empty atmosphere. The final movie of the competition is My Dear Dorje by the Cantonese director Yao Wang, a short movie characterized by a dramatic atmosphere: in an isolated Tibetan village, a girl already has a family to take care of. She is illiterate and tries to secretly follow the lessons at a local school, craving for an education and the opportunity to be at the same level of a man. Set in Tibet, a country still far from modernization, in an archaic and majestic nature, this story of friendship and understanding puts a path of pain and willpower on stage, showing the great story of common people.
Since the very first edition of the Ca’ Foscari Film Festival, the International Contest goes along with the Veneto High Schools’ Competition, (at 5 PM), dedicated to the short films realised by young students belonging to Venetian Superior Institutes. The winner will be voted by a jury of Ca’ Foscari students supervised by Carlo Montanaro. Here are the three finalist short films on screen for this edition. A Long Travel by Alessandro Sicari, in which the adolescence of the main character is told through the objects that step by step are dropped off on the writing desk, symbol of the typical changing of age. In Convergence by Cecilia Crisetti the moving of the protagonist, trapped in a society that runs too much fast, he finds the stillness when in a smooth-sea he becomes reflection of his soul and of his joy of living. Finally, Prometheus by Riccardo Tonon gives a modern revival of the myth of Prometheus, the titan who brings fire to men, to becomes an instrument of war inside the society itself.
And finally, the Veneto Competition inaugurates the first collaboration with Quindici19, a short film festival organized entirely by young people and dedicated to young filmmakers between the ages of 15 and 19 years. The goal of this competition is to provide an opportunity for young filmmakers to learn and take up a career into the world of cinema. On this occasion, the winner of the 2016 edition, Pause by the young Australian director Sebastian Marsden, will be screened with its simple but genuine reflection. This year also marks the fourth edition of “Olga Brunner Levi” Prize, a competition established in 2014 by Ugo and Olga Levi Foundation. The award is for the best video made by students of Italian high schools. The subject of these videos is either the female musical performance or the relationship between the relationship between women and music in history. The winning video will be screened during the program, chosen by the jurors Luisa Zanoncelli from the Levi Foundation, Roberto Calabretto from the University of Udine, and Maria Roberta Novielli from University of Venice.
