Venice, October 9th 2021. The day at the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival began at the Auditorium Santa Margherita with the Music Video Competition. Reaching its fifth edition, this side competition dedicated to music videos has, as its protagonists, young students coming from film schools and universities of different countries throughout the world. The finalist videos projected are nine: Pinchazo, a description of a dystopic future by Javier Guerrero and Miguel Noboa, Doyle x Wauro – A.M.I.A., a satire towards 90s government institutions by the alternative trap duo Matyas Doyle and Wauro, The Silver Kingdom by Christopher de Villers and Midnight by Leila Jurdi, which have as their protagonists two young women, Mohinos de Vento by Dani Drumond, the Brazilian musician Zebeto Corrêa’s first music video, Helydea by the Italian filmmaker Roberto Pisapia, Wish You Were Here by Aditya Vikram Chawla, set in a post-apocalyptic world, Pick Up Your Cross (and follow me) by Michael J. Keplinger, a music video based on the stop-motion animation and created for an original song by the very same director, and finally The Tower by Sunc̆ana Brkulj, the story of a little civilization that, thorough the years, makes its way to the top. The jury that is going to assign the prize to the best videoclip this evening is made up of the director and producer Giovanni Bedeschi, the president of the Levi Foundation scientific committee Roberto Calabretto, the composers Marco Fedalto and Daniele Furlati.
The day then continued with the eighth edition of the “Olga Brunner Levi” High School Competition. Established by the Ugo and Olga Levi Foundation, historical partner of the Short, the competition sees as protagonists secondary school students from different countries. The young directors got involved by presenting videos that have music and role of women in music as their themes. For the occasion, the four finalist videos were screened: Dream of the Russian Anastasia Rodionova and Valiantsina Tsedzik is inspired by the difficult condition that we all had to face in this last period, narrating with animation the feelings of five young friends regarding the pandemic and the distance they must keep. From England Cloned by Paula Szczyrba tells of a failed experiment and the fear one feels towards oneself, often capable of unimaginable things. The third video is From What You Left Behind (Australia) by Jodhi Ramsden-Mavric, in which friendship and memories are accompanied by music. Finally, The Dome of the Sky by Iranian Mohamad Ghaderi, a short film that deals with the difficult condition of child brides, victims of a culture that is still too rigid. Judging the four videos was a jury composed by Roberto Calabretto, professor Cosetta Saba and the composer Marco Fedalto.
Whereas in the afternoon the second part of the projects realised by the collective Mujeres (which means “women” in Spanish) in the cinema for the fiction genres, actresses, performers and music videos has been presented. As regards the first section, the four scheduled shorts portray female characters in their attempt to take control of their own lives again: from Mille scudi (A thousand shields), by Serena Corvaglia, that talks about the escape of a new mom between freedom and an outlaw life with a violent partner, we move on to Mind the gap, a short directed by Donatella Gottardi, based on a true love story that goes on even after the husband’s death through his voice in the train station announcements, but hindered by the substitution of the tape with an ma artificial voice. Roberta De Santis, in Dalla fine (From the end), creates the character of Sara, a young woman in charge of taking care of an old Alzheimer’s patient in a nursing home; going from tutor to care for, it is the man who will help the young woman find a way out of the dark period she is experiencing. The limbo between a painful past and an uncertain future is at the centre of Forza, a short film by Chiara Troisi. At the centre of the program, there was not only the cinematographic product, but woman’s body too: directors, actresses and performers with different paths behind them, different biographies, different works. Actress Fulvia Patrizia Olivieri, whose career was presented trough her showreel, was present today. Alongside her, also Piera Saladino, cinema and drama actress who studied between Rome and Paris, Italo-American actress Anna Sozzani, of whom the short Single was shown, and Lilith Primavera, who presented Goodbye My Lover, the first of a three-parts musical short film. For the section dedicated to music videos, director Margarita Bareikytè presented OCD, a videoclip exploring the sense of obsession proved by those who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, whereas Francesca Noto presented Whales part one (ocean), which, through a surreal and dreamlike atmosphere, wraps a gloomy and oppressed nature.
The last screenings of the day were of East Asia Now curated by Stefano Locati. This recurring program is dedicated to far East Asia’s short cinema, which this year, through three short films, analyses the socio-economic consequences and the psychological aftermath of the pandemic. The directors of this section, by using different filming techniques and an extreme oneiric language, didn’t spare the darkest and most gut-wrenching depictions of paranoia and obsession that even the audience has come to know. Kim Kang-min from South Korea, with his short film Dream he suggested a dive into a black and white surrealistic and morbid dream. Grotesque images and social critique are the protagonists of Excuse me Miss, Miss, Miss by Sonny Calvento, a Filipino director who presents a satire about companion and alienation. A very particular technical choice was made by the Japanese Horii Ayaka, in What a day, in which the carefree memories of a drink between friends before the lockdown are retrieved through the split-screens of video calls, that have become the more widespread means of social contact of the last year.
To close the curtains of the eleventh edition of the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival, this evening there will be the closing ceremony with the awards to all the winners and a great show curated by Igor Imhoff will enrich the evening.
