Diary – 4 July 2020

Fate at times has some really surprise jokes in store for the human race.

It takes away the comfort blanket of our daily lives and rases our routine and false sense of security to the ground.

It reinvents our little world, adjusting it to totally new existential solutions.

Faced with all this, Art cannot and must not stop. It may be that everything will change and the great storm will never be calmed completely, but the creativity and inventiveness we all possess will resist being swallowed up.

This year our Festival has opted to use new ways of seeing and, almost as if a challenge, it’s always great images that keep us company.

Virginia Raffaele, talented and beautiful performer, and not just comic, of more recent theatre and TV seasons, gave an account some time ago of her experience as a child growing up in a family of fairground workers, where certain shared experiences and lifestyles are different from how we imagine them to be.

INVERNO by Giulio Mastromauro is based on the same theme and told through the eyes of Timo, a young Greek carny struggling with pain and loss.

A pleasing narrative structure for a short which has met with unanimous consensus and awards.

LOST AND FOUND by Andrew Goldsmith and Bradley Slabe is the moving and touching love story of two yarn puppets, a fox and a dinosaur, in a Japanese home, a parable of love and sacrifice filled with true lyricism.

PINA COLADA by David Grove Draad puts the ne’er-do-well lead character through a few nasty moments. An unexpected, alcoholic, mix turns the situation around. Grotesque and devastating.

MARS OMAN by Vanessa del Campo Gatell is a documentary that chooses a clear contrast as narrative structure.

On the one hand spartan desert life and rural rhythms, on the other hand exploration of Mars.

Discussing holidays this year is definitely risky and so it becomes even more interesting to find out what Wiep Teeuwisse has to say on the subject.

Against the most orange of orange backgrounds, INTERMISSION EXPEDITION shows us tourists with funny hats who move around as one in an unsettling context where nature changes constantly.

LIMBO by Dani Viqueria Carballal will send shivers down your spine despite the heat. Clear references to the best in slasher cinema, à la West Craven or Tobe Hooper. In the film’s sinister drama, the menacing peril of a collective fit of murderous rage shapes up.

Lucid control of spaces and the fragmented passage between beautiful natural landscapes and urban lighting are the marks of I CREATED MEMORIES by Sammy Gadboys.

A sympathetic vision of various life scenarios in the hope of capturing the out-of-reach meaning of memories.

During these months of enforced isolation, the inherent resource and meaning of the film idiom have appeared blatantly obvious to us and this time the journey around the world takes place on an equal footing, each one in front of their screen, safeguarding inner feelings.

We believe we said this a few years ago: Vasco Pratolini used to repeat that the journey of knowledge towards the world starts from your own garden. We have been forced to stay in our personal garden in recent months, like it or not.

Now, in the words of a wonderful song by Stadio dedicated to Marco Pantani, we’re standing on the pedals for a new road ahead.

The journey continues…