THE SECOND DAY OF THE
CA’ FOSCARI SHORT FILM FESTIVAL 9
PATRICE LECONTE’S MASTERCLASS:
“THE SUICIDE SHOP IS A MUSICAL FILM”
THE SHORT FILMS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION BETWEEN ISOLATION AND REDEMPTION
ASSASSIN’S CREED LINEAGE:
THE SHORT FILMS FROM THE VIDEOGAME SAGA
AND MUCH MORE: THE SHORTS OF ‘FILMS IN VENICE’ SUMMER SCHOOL, WORLD FILM FAIR AND THE MEETING WITH THE DIRECTORS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
VENICE, MARCH 21, 2019. Room packed last night at the Santa Margherita Auditorium for the masterclass by filmmaker Patrice Leconte, one of the most important guests of this ninth edition of the festival. It is difficult to condense forty years of cinematic experience in a couple of hours, when for the same “eight or nine hours would not have been enough”. Nonetheless, to lead the public on this journey into the diverse and immense world of the artist, Gabrielle Gamberini, deputy director of the Alliance Française of Venice, commented on six extracts from the most famous productions of the French director: The Hairdresser’s Husband, a feature film that Leconte described simply as the story of a boy who loved to keep his hair short, grows up, finally marries a hairdresser as he had always dreamed of and the two live happily. Because, he explained, in our transitory and materialistic world, it was right to celebrate love for minimalism through a simple plot; a love that is sufficient to itself. He then moved on to the extract of Ridicule, nominated at the Academy Awards for best foreign film. The film was the first in costume for the director, who immediately had to fight with the fear of making a film that was too classic, but which later became one of his most popular works. From these two lively and colorful films, he then moved to a darker world, the black and white of The Girl on the Bridge, a film that, as Leconte himself says, was a challenge because “I love to face stimulating challenges because they never bore me”. While recounting anecdotes on the realization of this film, Leconte does not miss the opportunity to remember how a meeting can change our lives radically and how you always have to seize all possible chances: “we have to open our eyes to what surrounds us, because if you spend your days with your nose glued to your smartphone, no meeting will ever take place”. Then he discussed the themes of redemption and loyalty, speaking of The Widow of Saint-Pierre, a film which shows that no one is one hundred percent evil and that in everyone there is always something to save, just like in the love story between the captain and his wife, both ready to die and to sacrifice themselves in the name of love. With The Man on the Train, Leconte cheerfully remembers his previous visit to Venice, in 2002 for the International Film Festival, accompanied by the protagonists Johnny Hallyday and Jean Rochefort. The film, despite being a singular episode that sees the relationship of a normal French professor to an adventurous gangster, its universal message is that “we often want to live the lives of others”. Finally, the first animated film by Leconte was screened, his most recent work, The Suicide Shop (2012). Through this new narrative mode, the French director explains, he was able to go further and use black humor to deal with a theme as delicate as suicide, even putting it side by side with songs and making it become almost a sort of “musical”.
Today the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival opened with an absolute novelty: during the morning the short films directed by the first edition of the “Summer School Films in Venice and Filming Venice” were presented. The Summer School took place from the 27th of August to the 5th of September 2018, and was organized by the Venice International University, which was joined by many other prestigious Colleges: Ca’ Foscari, IUAV, Tel Aviv, Waseda and IULM. The school adopted an innovative approach, merging the teaching of theoretical and technical subjects with the practical work of film making. Students dedicated their work to the representation of Venice, through a multidisciplinary but also multicultural approach, since participants and teachers came from all over the world.
Ca’ Foscari students were also protagonists of the second event of the day, the “Short Meeting Point”. The 11th of March the pupils of the Fine Arts and Filmmaking Master were assigned specific themes, extracted randomly, on which they created some short films, in only 72 hours. These short films were projected in front of the judges of the International Competition, to stimulate a debate with the students
Another first time was the panel dedicated to the World Film Fair of New York. The event has had its first inauguration in October 2018, in which many short films of the 8th edition of the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival were projected, together with a masterclass of Barry Purves, who has been a jury of the Short. A strong bond which, through the Film Market exchange program, has created this collaboration. The World Film Fair of New York connects young artists with producers, distributors, and investors, giving a great platform to new talents and projects. Four of the most representative shorts were presented, among which “Ferruccio. Storia di un (piccolo) robot”, directed by Stefano de Felici, about an inventor who creates a robot putting together recycled objects.
Later, Giovanni Maisto, Ubisoft concept artist, got on the stage to present the special program dedicated to Assassin’s Creed, the famous video-game series realized by the French software house. Maisto introduced three short films in live-action titled Assassin’s Creed Lineage, which fit the continuity of the series. They were realized by the Canadian director Yves Simone, and they featured many Italian actors. Moreover, there was the presentation of five trailers in computer graphics, made to launch the new chapters of the saga each time they are released.
On the stage of the Auditorium Santa Margherita the presentation of the International Competition shorts’ went on. The show began with the snap of the mice’s trap of Fuse, directed by the Iranian graphic designer Shadi Adib of the Filmakademie Baden-Wuttemberg. It continued with the Italian short Nooh by Edoardo Bramucci, in which the namesake protagonist, an African child who had just arrived in Italy, builds a locus amoenus of isolation from reality before meeting with an Italian girl. Following Nooh, the Polish fiction People Talk by Grzegorz Paprzycki: in this short, we find again the theme of isolation, but in this case, of a man who is thought to be living in solitude into the wood. Following his steps, two young people embark on a physical and metaphorical journey. It continues with the short What’s Your Name by Nour Al-Moujabber of the Lebanese University Faculty of Fine Arts and Architecture, the story of a young director who tries to keep the memory of his mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer, alive by making her narrate a video diary. From the Bejing Film Academy Zhang Xueying with The Intruder, where the protagonist gets stuck in her mistake, finding herself on the scene of a premeditated murder and at the centre of an uncomfortable situation difficult to overcome. This first part ended with Akif by Harun Baysan, with the story of the apparently weak protagonist of the same name, who on the contrary shows a strong character and finds a way to abandon his military service and help his sick father.
The second part of the competition continued with the animated short Stuck in the Middle co-directed by Denis Fleurion, Etienne Bonafini, Romain Marchetti, Cécile Minaud, Julien Adoum and Léo Nezot from the French school Rubika, in which the fate of the French protagonists traveling across the United States changes the moment they meet a strange hitchhiker. Another film that takes place on the road is Dhachka, a story of family issues resolved by the mother of the family, directed by the Indian Devik Rathod. Elephant in the room, by the Swiss Chanelle Eidenbenz, analyzes social taboos, the difficulty of accepting reality and the consequences that this entails. We then moved to Austria for Mark Gerstorfer‘s TNT Boxerstory, which tells the story of a boxer who fails to accept the end of his career. Madness dominates The Great Imogene, Rachel David‘s American fiction that unites psychiatric environments with the world of magic, creating a game of perspectives that invites a deeper reflection on the theme. The last short film scheduled is The Last Children in Paradise, by the German Anna Roller, which deals with the traumatic transition from childhood to adolescence.
In the evening, there will be a focus on the Italian experimental animator Leonardo Carrano, with a masterclass in which he will illustrate his unique working method.
