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The winners of the 20th edition of ShorTS International Film Festival

23 September 2019/0 Comments/in News 2019

The 20th edition of the ShorTS International Film Festival ended on Saturday 6th July with the award ceremony in Piazza Verdi at 8.00 pm. The Trieste event has announced the 2019 winners of the various competitive sections, confirming its commitment to finding new cinematic landscapes.

Here are the comments from the director Chiara Valenti Omero and the co-director Maurizio di Rienzo:

“After 20 years of screenings, discoveries and research, ShorTS wanted to confirm with this important edition its diverse vocation and attention to new horizons on the reality of the world through exciting short films, feature films and documentaries, as well as immersive journeys in Virtual Reality, screenings dedicated to children and adolescents and meetings with authors, producers and filmmakers. It gives us pleasure and honour that the Trieste public (and the wider world) has followed and appreciated this articulated 9-day program of unique images and dialogues with the protagonists. Our intention is to give space to all the different ways of making films in the world today, just as we seem to be surrounded by ordinary audiences with videos, stories and media on which to see them. Therefore ShorTS, eager to anticipate new eras of cinema, will try with passion and critical spirit to continue its “elusive” side in the coming years.”

The winners of the 20th edition of ShorTS International Film Festival

MAREMETRAGGIO SECTION
(Jury composed of Álvaro Gago Díaz, Heinz Hermanns, Hrönn Marinósdóttir, Pippo Mezzapesa and Fabio Omero)

EstEnergy Award – Hera Group

Best short film:
“All inclusive” by Corina Schwingruber Ilić
Reason: “Accurate, touching, all-encompassing. A compelling narrative that reveals the emptiness of the entertainment industry staged aboard a cruise ship, inviting us all to look in the mirror, to laugh, and to use this laugh to change the ship’s course. ”

Special mention to:
“Inanimate” by Lucia Bulgheroni
Motivation: “This intelligent and original animation shows us the daily life of a woman. Through the use of extraordinary images and surprising twists it connects different levels of life and reality. ”

AcegasApsAmga Award

Best Italian short film:
“My Tyson” by Claudio Casale
Reason: “We particularly appreciated the application of the short film tools to the contents of the documentary film. The result is a work that at the same time tells a human story and investigates a social phenomenon (the integration of second generations), gravitating attention to the emotional impact of overlapping languages and to minute details that, together, restore complexity of a fresco of life. ”

Premiere Film Award
Best short film not distributed:
“Raymonde or the Vertical escape” by Sarah Van den Boom
Reason: “For the ability to build a world suspended between fairy-tale elements and the contemporary, in which the protagonist, after a life of solitude, finds the strength to question her choices and to act to satisfy her desire of love, of sex, of life. ”

Oltre il Muro Award

Best Italian short film voted by the inmates of Trieste Prison:
“Bautismo” by Mauro Vecchi
Reason: “The short film represents with strength and lucidity an increasingly topical subject: that of petty crime, youth gangs and bullying that is raging in large urban areas. In this case the metropolis is Milan. Outlining a character, one of these boys in disarray but outside of criminal and indeed very sensitive and delicate contexts, the author succeeds in resurrecting that violence of an almost ancestral rituality that has always been the depersonalisation of the individual, one of the prices to pay to become part of the “social contract” of a group or clan (not necessarily criminals) where you live or survive. ”

Special mention to:
“Così in terra” by Pier Lorenzo Pisano
Motivation: “For having deeply grasped the inexplicable mystery of life that no one, not even the “experts” in togas or those in white collars, knows how to answer. The only solution remains to help and compare those who live in great inner suffering, moral and even physical, depending on their nature and role which in their turn destiny or god has bestowed on us. ”

Trieste Caffè Award
Best short film voted by the public:
“Pepitas” by Alessandro Sampaoli and “Fino alla fine” by Giovanni Dota

AMC Award
Best Italian editing:
“My Tyson” by Claudio Casale
Reason: “For the use of dialectical editing as an element of narrative dynamics. As the mother sews clothes so the assembly weaves moments of life of the two protagonists. Mother and child unite, images and sounds intertwine developing their history in the present to detect the conditions determined in the past, and indicating a future already existing in our reality: the inevitability of a possible freedom, always.

Special mention to:
“Freddo dentro” by Valerio Burli
Reason: “The special mention goes to a short film that in the fusion of imagination and reality metaphorically represents the generational confrontation. The narrative timing of the montage describes, on the one hand, the human condition of addiction to horror and the inability to oppose it together in searching for an embrace, an impossible spark of humanity; on the other hand, as a last path for the new generations, the dive into a foggy elsewhere in search of a concrete possibility.”

Leonardo Da Vinci Award
Best Italian Cinematography:
“The Shadow of the Bride” by Alessandra Pescetta
Reason: “The Sicilian sea welcomed and never returned the bodies of thousands of children who died during the Second World War. The dead on one side and on the other the opposing armies and nations, but they all found themselves at the bottom of the sea. Bodies that in the tight cuts of the shots fluctuate through the water, together with the memories and the connections left and now broken – the photo of the lover, love letters, the wedding ring -, bodies that not even in the depth of that sea can find peace. Alessandra Pescetta paints these bodies with the raw light that filters through the water, the leaden colours and the final gestures that seek a contact again with those who in that same water have lost all hope of once again embracing them. And as in Leonardo, also in “L ‘shadow of the bride’, it is the affections that draw the story between men and to talk about them still holds power. It is in fact the story of a tragic journey, which transforms the dream of a future life into the drama of those who will not even have a wooden coffin and a piece of land in which to be buried. A tragic journey, which still continues to repeat itself in that stretch of sea. ”

SHORTS VIRTUAL REALITY SECTION
(Jury composed of Antonio Giacomin, Gabriella Giliberti and Stefano Seriani)

EstEnergy Award – Hera Group

Best VR short film:
“Tower of Babel by the sea” by Feng Wei-Jung
Reason: “Tower of Babel by the Sea is an immersive journey, achieved through the use of virtual reality and, therefore, the subjectivity of the viewer, which allows us to explore new narrative perspectives that have their roots in the tragic reality of an ever growing world adrift. A mythological re-elaboration that faces us with a passive, narrow and disturbing struggle, and makes us reflect on how much man hides behind the concept of an “evil deity”; the film brings to light his tragic delirium of omnipotence, of vice and pride that makes him a victim of himself. A complex technical and narrative work, with an important, accurate, chilling and shocking metaphorical value, where the use of virtual reality amplifies the sense of powerlessness and drama of events, profoundly tarnishing the soul of the viewer.”

Special mention to:
“Borderline” by Assaf Machnes
Reason: “A reflection on the physical and conceptual sense of the border, on the exploration of it and on the lability of the term in front of the vastness of a deserted land. A film that pushes us to go beyond the idea of the border itself with the use of virtual reality, spurring the viewer to cross any “line”, discovering, exploring with the look and actions. An extract of reality constructed with a dramatic structure at par with a thriller, where suspense grows and the climax is almost exasperated, leading to desperately wanting to interact with the drama of the events, until reaching an unexpected final that makes the narrative itself , as current as it is unique. A task – in the light of what we are experiencing – that cannot be but remembered and, therefore, rewarded.”

RAI Cinema Channel Award
Best VR short film:
Ex aequo “Metro veinte: cita ciega” by María Belén Poncio and “Borderline” by Assaf Machnes

Reason for “Metro veinte”: “To have wisely exploited the potential of VR technology and to have put it in support of a story that defies courage but at the same time delicately taboos about sexuality and disability.”

Reason for “Borderline”: “For the ability to immerse the viewer into the virtual experience, bringing it effectively into the narrative, capturing our attention to the end and allowing him to experience the emotions and uncertainties of the protagonists.”

Il Piccolo Award
Best VR short film voted by the public:
“Borderline” by Assaf Machnes

NUOVE IMRPONTE SECTION
(Jury composed of Alessio Cremonini, Elena Cucci, Gianluca Guzzo, Vinicio Marchioni and Sara Serraiocco)

Crédit Agricole FriulAdria Award
Best feature film:
“Selfie” by Agostino Ferrente
Reason: “For the ability to make us question the ethical and aesthetic mechanisms of representation, in an age in which everyone becomes the director of themselves and yet never ceases to be the object of the gaze. For the authenticity of the story personally managed by the protagonists and the uneducated truth of their gaze. For the honesty in declaring, however, that the presence of a director in some way also shapes the self-managed representation. And because this film changes the way we interpret the narrative and representational possibilities of Italian cinema, leaving a profound imprint that from now on will be impossible to ignore.”

MYmovies Award
Best feature film voted by the public “Beautiful Things” by Giorgio Ferrero and Federico Biasin

AGICI Award
Best production: “Selfie” by Agostino Ferrente
Reason: “It is strange to give the prize to the best producer / production where a production seems to be almost non-existent. This documentary film goes beyond cinematic veracity and enters the mirror of truth, in the representation of the same by the protagonists. The extraordinary work of the screenwriter, director and producers is to put his strength and skills at the service of the unpredictable path of those who tell themselves. They won the award for Best Production, Casa delle Visioni and Magnèto Productions for having been able to support the extreme concept of Agostino Ferrente in a production process that brought to the Film the support of precious institutions such as the Istituto Luce and the French CNC as well as two large European cultural companies: Rai Cinema and ARTE France. Selfie is a difficult film to produce precisely because of its deliberately anarchic construction, which thanks to certainly tenacious producers has given all its spectators unique moments of cinema. ”

SNCCI Award
Best feature film voted by the jury of the Italian Film Critics Union: “The World is flat” by Matteo Carrega Bertolini
Reason: “To look for one’s place in the world between needs and desires, fears and frustrations, without losing oneself. “The World is flat” shows how the encounter with the other is the best compass when the Earth seems to flatten out. We reward the film, therefore, for its ability to tell in a non-trivial way bodies and spaces, looks and gestures, to find authentic images even within a tradition of independent cinema, through a conscious aesthetic “.

ANAC Award
Best screenplay: “Selfie” by Agostino Ferrente
Reason: “An innovative, rigorous writing. The portrait, or rather self-portrait, of the two protagonists Alessandro and Pietro, both sixteen and resident in the Trajan district of Naples, is touching and detached at the same time. The stylistic choice of the “selfie”, a risky and reckless road, was pursued with great consistency and awareness. The lucid determination with which a writing that made use of the technique of empathy was discarded, thus avoiding transforming the two protagonist boys into “cool anti-heroes”, in the style of many TV series. Ultimately, an innovative writing for an equally innovative film, whose “frontal” frames suggest the shots of the first two films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, “Accattone” and “Mamma Roma”. As we know, for the great Friulian poet “frontality is sacredness”.

SHORTER KIDS’N TEENS SECTION

Shorter Kids Award
Best Kids short film:
“Becolored” by Maurizio Forestieri

Public Shorter Kids Award
Best Kids short film voted by the public:
“Becolored” by Maurizio Forestieri

Shorter Teens Award
Best short Teens:
“Me first” by Aggelos Tzogou, Diamantis Pachis, Giorgos Foskolos, Nikos Skiathitis, Panagiotis Fouscarinis, Ioanna Foskolou, Ioanna Tsarpala

Public Shorter Teens Award
Best Teens short film voted by the public:
“Golden Girl” by Chiara Fleischhacker

Cinema Award of the Present
Alessio Cremonini

Prospettiva Award
Francesco Di Napoli

20° ShorTSIFF – Diary of 4 july 2019

5 July 2019/0 Comments/in Diary 2019

A large helping of cinema in the crucial days of the ShorTS International Film Festival, the 20th edition.

While the sun, as a good guardian of the underworld, still keeps us under his heel, here we are at the Miela Theatre to see the short films that were scheduled for the previous evening.

Let’s start with an all-female story, one born from the imagination of the authors Kotecka and Poryzata with their short TIMES. We are within an adolescent filmic painting, where acrobatics and the competitive world in general are a background for the chronicle of the anxieties of youth. Very touching scenes of emotional conflict between girls.

The psychological tale of CENA D’ARAGOSTE unfolds in an anonymous Italian city; it should be an opportunity for a meeting between two boys and the mother of one of them but the banquet turns into an outlet for mutual weaknesses and aggression; directed by Gregorio Franchetti.

Claudio Baglioni, in his songs dedicated to the Russian astronaut, described the stars as the freckles of God; a piece of that poem is also contained in GAGARIN, MI MANCHERAI by Domenico De Orsi, which begins as a depiction of a couple and then takes the road of unpredictability.

An authentic orgy of colours, lights, sounds and an afternoon nightmare inside the Portuguese couple Afonso and Madail’s DON’T FEED THESE ANIMALS. A fable of the absurd with a carrot and a laboratory rabbit that results in complete hilarity.

The things that belong to us, physical or spiritual, sometimes can sometimes abandon us in bad taste by dropping the dangerous bomb of nostalgia. 27 FLOORS by Alvaro Rivera focuses on these narrative modules describing the peculiar loss of a building that is a symbol of a piece of our life.

FIRE MOUTH by Luciano Perez Fernandez: Brazil is a country that has always honoured football as if it were a real divinity; FIRE MOUTH is the parable of a tightrope walker on the sporting airwaves.

SWAMP by Juan Sebastian Mesa is a work of Latin origin about a child and his grim excavation work; as always the reminiscences draw on a strongly symbolic universe where he buries his innocence.

BLESS YOU! by the young Polish author Paulina Zialkowska is an animated short film on the unpredictable scans of everyday behaviour; the author graduated from the famous film school in Lodz where Roman Polanski was born.

HUNGER KEEPS WALKING by Giulio Canella is a disturbing story of the naked body in the mirror, of how fantasy can give birth to another in and of itself and allow an escape from reality with unpredictable consequences.

An inexplicable attraction is at the centre of F**K DIFFERENT by David Barbieri. A disco playboy finds himself inexorably drawn to a girl with a body that is not exactly Apollonian; he is dismayed, doubtful but finally gives in …

WOMEN UNSEEN by Omar Daher Gullen would seem at first to be a romantic story but we go on to witness the construction of a cathedral of blood and death; indebted to the masters of horror, we witness a public garden invaded by the living dead (or presumed as much).

20:30 exactly: there is time for a walk to Piazza Verdi while a colourful and international crowd immortalises with their smartphones the joyful froth of the sea by the pier. Next up, a work full of social significance with the director of the film Alessio Cremonini: ON MY SKIN – THE LAST SEVEN DAYS OF STEFANO CUCCHI. The director won the Cinema of the Present Award, with obvious excitement from the author and the public.

Happy not to have a moment’s respite, we then lose ourselves to the suspense at the airport with Ali Asgari’s DELAY. The terrible hypothesis of a child rape or attempted rape emerges, but as often happens, reality can be a crazy variable.

Two darlings of the Trieste public, Ariella Reggio and Lino Guanciale are respectively grandmother and granddaughter in PEPITAS by Alessandro Sampaoli. A young man hides his homosexuality and his secret job as drag queen, however the elderly relative will show an unexpected sensitivity. Delicious.

Italy also rides high with the short film GLI ARCIDIAVOLI by Lorenzo Pullega, a satire of corporate circles and authorities cooked in a typical Emilian sauce and featuring actors known to the public such as Andrea Roncato.

THE DEATH OF DON QUIXOTE by Miguel Faus speaks of the theatre and roles within it, of the atavistic confusion between reality and fiction, capturing everything with a severe black and white.

A PLACE CALLED HOME by Isabella Brunacker poses disturbing questions about time and uses an accurate minimalist interpretation.

Can you be addicted to Coca Cola? The sympathetic protagonist of the animated comic COLAHOLIC by Marcin Podolec bears witness to it: he literally drowns in the drink (famously sung about by Vasco Rossi) and for him it is a continuous punishment even if he speaks of it in auto-ironic terms.

No caustic or mocking element, however, for Aw See Wee’s KAMPUNG TAPIR; there are two descriptive elements to the work: the crisis of a young couple and the martyrdom of an almost extinct animal.

BAUTISMO by Mauro Vecchi is a violent reportage from the bad lands of the suburban regions, where absurd rules of power and abuses coexist; the final purifying wash has a religious and evocative value.

MYCELIUM from the German Justus Toussaint touches on very sensitive sentimental journeys, especially when those who sleep next to you prefigure your death through a dream. Who is responsible for it? Who will pay the consequences?

The aforementioned Polanski would have liked the female figure trapped within her own world of EVERYTHING CALMS DOWN by Virginia Scaro. In a climate reminiscent of REPULSION by the Polish director, this claustrophobic thriller takes place with a young woman as the protagonist who will have to resort to using every resource, with a unique ending.

A very rich and still warm evening, there is a desire for ice cream or anything that represents the cold.

We meet again Friday evening.

20° ShorTSIFF – Diary of 3 july 2019

5 July 2019/0 Comments/in Diary 2019

“Eccentric visions” was the name of a remarkable series of films on Rai3 many years ago. Yesterday evening was eccentric and unpredictable as the shorts screenings shifted to the Teatro Miela on Thursday afternoon, an area protected by thunder, lightning and assorted devils generously provided by someone up above.

Don’t worry: good cinema is still here thanks to the SPECIAL EVENT section, which contemplates an Italian work directed with two sets of hands by the young Sara Pigozzo and Enrico Meneghelli.

We are referring to TOXIKONDOM, presented by Chiara Valenti Omero and Maurizio Di Rienzo during a fruitful interview with the two authors present in the room. It is not only the story of a sanguine, unleashed complex of ‘hard rock’ full of subversive force and transgression, but also a slice of work and social life.

Sea water, fishing for clams and cork oaks, young fishermen and the world of lakes that the late Venetian director Salvatore Samperi admirably described in the 1973 film UN’ANGUILLA DA TRECENTO MILIONI.

A few free lines of available text are a precious resource for the writer so let’s not waste it, and here compose an ideal human map that shows the network of our entire Festival.

Difficult not to notice, first and foremost, is the commitment and the engaging pro positivity of our president and artistic director Chiara Valenti Omero: a sensitive artistic soul accustomed to never giving up. A witty, thoughtful, knowledgeable connoisseur of the affairs of cinema, Maurizio Di Rienzo is also endowed with a soft sense of humour, never harmful to others. Talk to him, and you will benefit from it.

An important artistic manifestation like this one is not only composed of artistic creativity, it requires technical means and strong arms to set it up. Pietro Crosilla, Daniele Marzone and Francesco Sacchi are the men behind the screen, our quality technical personnel.

A new young friend, Francesco Bonerba, is responsible for social media and multimedia, so he also has to put up with the ramblings of yours truly.

Next we have the great friends of the SHORTS KIDS N ‘TEEN section, most importantly Raffaella Canci, a discreet and careful coordinator who we always see again with pleasure.

Daniela Pick Tamaro is another new friend, she is in charge of managing the hospitality office and does it with that smiling grace that is a pre-eminent trait of her character.

Beatrice Fiorentino takes care of the NEW IMPRESSIONS section, she loves the cinema and grasps all the instances, inexorably good.

Francesco Ruzzier is in turn the inexhaustible eye behind the MAREMETRAGGIO section (also the VIRTUAL REALITY is his own speciality).

There are other important friends waiting to be discussed , and we will do so in the next few entries, meanwhile the journey continues…

20° ShorTSIFF – Diary of 2 july 2019

3 July 2019/0 Comments/in Diary 2019

If the boiling heat does not grant us respite, Eolo, God of the winds, grants us a little break; but his mischievous contribution still forces us to move the screenings to the Miela Theater.

Here the magic of cinema wins over everyone suffering due to weather: NESSUN DORMA by Paolo Strippoli is a nightmare in broad daylight between atavistic sceneries of stone and cathedrals from the southern country; almost reminiscent of the old horror: DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING (1973). Directed by the master of fears Lucio Fulci, that film restored an eerie pagan mass atmosphere … in the precious short film by Strippoli, a sort of motionless dream attacks everyone in a story where anxious questions have no answers.

THE STAINED CLUB comes from France and is directed by a collective of talented animation directors. It is an apologia for accepting oneself and one’s body; delicious in their unleashing of the “Star dust” style spots. We are touching on themes seen many times before, such as in PLEASANTVILLE, but made with original inventiveness.

VOICE by Takeshi Kushida provides a sort of prolonged oriental dance between an ordinary man and a female figure that perhaps exists only in the world of ghosts; the continuous fragmentation of human movements gives the film the value of a material in the making.

The German author Caroline Schwarz with her DOORS OF PERCEPTION not only alludes to the themes dear to writer Aldous Huxley but traverses her own life with a drawn character whose face we consider deeply and stir.

Science fiction for those that aim at introspection from the Spanish author Frankie De Leonardis in FLOATING, where a young astronaut finds himself surrounded by an ambivalent reality grappling with a paralysing dilemma.

Bullying and social media for FIFTEEN by Peiman Zekavat, adolescence, loss of privacy and the consequent existential pain seen through the eyes of a teenager.

The pool is a place that has always been dear to the cinema screen from the time of the famous namesake of the 1960s to the very sad THE GIRL OF THE PUBLIC BATH (1970). The Italian author Lorenzo Puntoni chooses a multilayered framework to fill his AQUARIUM which is noted for its accurate photographic/psychological game.

In THE BONY LADY by the couple Barbossa and Zanato, we witness the true story of Arely Vazquez, a transgender woman who became a leader of the Santa Muerte sect. Worship wrapped in mystery, a widespread phenomenon in Mexico that celebrates death and sacrifice.

We cross the Atlantic with TOO YOUNG FOR A MEMOIR by Case Jermigan, a journey into the avenue of memories that turns into a personal evolution for the protagonist.

Now let’s immerse ourselves in the cold currents of the thriller with a special work only seen through a simple cell phone: FOLLOWER by Jonathan Behr. We discover this is the author’s homage to a great classic of fear: WHEN CALLS A STRANGER from Fred Walton and its subsequent imitations.

After so many visual sensations an aroma arrives. The scent of saltiness that comes from the sea of Trieste while a young couple probably produces displays of affection: very romantic.

See you on Wednesday evening.

Riccardo Visitin

20° ShorTSIFF – Diary of 1 july 2019

2 July 2019/0 Comments/in Diary 2019

Once on holiday in San Candido in Val Pusteria, on the cusp of the Austrian Dolomites, the writer met Vittorio Gassman. He no longer had the world in his hand as in his youth, the depression he wrote about was literally consuming him and yet, in the few minutes of conversation he gave me, his eyes lit up a couple of times with boyish enthusiasm. We were talking about Cinema, the one with a capital C, and the powerful charm of the Seventh Art was prevailing proudly over the evils of living.

Many colourful young people represent the splendid sun of this twentieth edition of our Festival, it is a pleasure to see them so full of adrenaline, with a passionate desire to learn.

Great success for the 24 HOURS SHORTS COMICS MARATHON procured by Francesco Cappellotto, an exciting adventure that demonstrates its potent social and cultural value.

We are then in the scalding space of Piazza Verdi, waiting for the cinematic images to envelop us like the tentacles of a friendly octopus.

Then, a real “parade of youth” on stage, accompanied by Chiara Valenti Omero and Francesco Ruzzier: they are the young actors – actors of the CIAK LAB project, directed by Francesco Filippi.

ORGOGLIO ALIENO, the title of their collective effort, succeeds and convinces the audience of the beautiful moral message inherent in the work.

The glittering and surreal bathers of the strange beach of CIRCUIT created by Delia Hess then arrive disarmingly; almost an idealised, animated planet, hypnotically suspended on its own alien matter.

RISE OF A STAR presents itself with the immortal notes of the Bolero by Maurice Ravel. A very special work on the private life of a young and successful dancer, who discovers she is pregnant and fears that this beautiful event may represent the end of her artistic career. A female story, however, directed by a man, the French James Bort.

How debauched are the cyclists born from the imagination of the Croatian director Vejko Popovic… they are engaged in uncontrollable sexual acts but there are also politicians on an Adamite line and other characters who are not inclined to worship modesty. Very funny, the title is CYCLISTS.

A parable on female emancipation and also a chronicle the unexpected demands of the acting world: THE ROLE directed by director Faarnosti Samad deals with such themes.

COSÌ IN TERRA by the young Italian author Pier Lorenzo Pisano is rendered highly striking by solid and sensitive acting of Roberto Citran, known by the public as loving theatre and the most introspective of cinema. This bitter story of faith and suicide, rarefied and white as the stones that welcome it, contains a diverse filmic substance that refers to Francesco Rosi and to our social-rural cinema in general.

THE THWARTED by the Vasseur duo – Terragno acts as a kind of room with a view on manipulations: characters in flesh and blood surrounded by colored paper environments, in constant movement.

YOU IDIOT, coming all the way from Singapore, is a teenage chronicle. Its music is a unifying element, depicting two guys who look out on life, looking towards their sweetest dreams. It is directed by Kris Ong.

THE DIVINE WAY is a strange and fascinating visual labyrinth: stairs upon stairs, endless steps crossed by feet that never tire of a young woman; a clear homage to Dante’s dream of descending into hell. It is a work that entrusts a prominent role to the décor. Behind the camera, our Ilaria Di Carlo.

Claudius Gentinetta’s SELFIES transports us to a centrifugal chaos where cellular images dominate, engulfing the man and forcing him into a morbid virtual connection.

Finally, icing on the cake, the short by Mael Le Mée lights the screen: in his short film AURORE, adolescents are struggling with their first sexual urges, However the eponymous female protagonist seems to hide hers, a terrifying nature that differentiates it from that of her friends’. A romantic ending, which we shan’t reveal!

As we stroll back past the Molo Audace, we look upon the pier full of young people bathing in the summer heat – a beautiful scene. The night evening a beautiful woman, and she is our friend tonight.

See you on Tuesday evening.

Riccardo Vistin

20° ShorTSIFF – Diary of 1 july 2019

1 July 2019/0 Comments/in Diary 2019

What a strange and engaging summer we’re having, from the sorrow for the health conditions of the great writer Andrea Camilleri to the rightful pride for the determination of the Women’s National Soccer Team.

We are closing another decade, confusion as always is sky-high, and according to the writer it is precisely in these moments that art displays its saving and wondrous qualities, helping everyone on a moral level.

Piazza Verdi is now our home, a place of choice where we meet and debate each other, returning home more enriched.

It starts well, very well indeed, with the poignant story of two spouses of sugar, that is, those on top of the wedding cake. In the romantic and timeless fantasy of the director Laura Luchetti, these objects are alive and thriving, they suffer like us humans, even when crumpled and thrown away they do not give up their sentimental dream. Beautiful and unique, the work is titled SUGAR LOVE, and to the director present in the audience we offered our applause.

We are still in the realm of the fairy tale, the quilted story of stars that clashes with the violent reality, when we see THE ANNOUNCEMENT from directors Roman and Thibault Lafargue. The theme is the reliability of Santa Clause: his existence is questioned, with unpublished final implications.

NOW WE CAN DIE IN PEACE, a paradoxical urban-football satire, is a sketch conducted very well by the versatile director Arnaud Guetz, who also takes care of photography and the distribution of his work.

From the suburban landscapes we pass then to the sunny, scorching desert plains, Arabia or its surroundings, where helpless children are involved in wild camel races. The little protagonist of THE CAMEL BOY stands out for his sweetness and sensitivity, in this sharp short about social denunciation directed by the French Chabonne Zariab.

SAVOR, on the other hand, boasts of truly amazing protagonists: salty and sweet sauces, centrifuges of vegetables and fruit, every sort of culinary and gastronomic ingredient is shaken in a crazy dance. Stèphane Baz directs, with congratulations to his authorial audacity …

MY TYSON, by Claudio Casale, is a documentary dedicated to a young pupil in Italian boxing, whose human and professional evolution is narrated from the mother’s mouth, a very sweet affair.

OUR SONG TO WAR does not offer up moral or rhetorical discounts with a sweeter taste: war is a terrible scourge, and those who pass through it come out transformed, and not for the better. In spite of everything, the film also speaks of mysticism and ancestral rites, in a climate similar to “FITZCARRALDO” by Werner Herzog.

HOW STEEL WAS TEMPERED provides an environment of hard manual work for a father, a child; according to Croatian author Igor Grubic, life is not a Doris Day film, as was the title of a comedy by Mino Bellei.

RAYMOND OR THE VERTICAL ESCAPE by Sarah Van den Boom has a red hot climax but don’t worry; the protagonists are turkeys, chickens and other animated countryside subjects.

Dramatic finale with L’OMBRA DELLA SPOSA: again, it is war and its horrendous burdens, well told by the Italian director Alessandra Pescetta.

A fiery red sky at midnight is still burning, and wishing for a cold drink we hope to see you on Monday evening.

Riccardo Visitin

20° ShorTSIFF – Diary of 29 june 2019

30 June 2019/0 Comments/in Diary 2019

Immaginate un elegante salone in penombra, stile art déco.

Qualcuno, vestito con una bianca livrea, sopravanza trasportando una torta da vista panoramica.

Appare chiaro a tutti che c’è un compleanno da festeggiare, i nostri primi vent’anni all’insegna delle grandi e piccole immagini.

Tanto affetto e presenze familiari già alla presentazione del Festival a Palazzo Gopcevich, poi questa immensa bolla di caldo incandescente si scioglie nella prima serata in Piazza Verdi.

Si inizia con le tragicomiche e surreali vicende dei protagonisti di ALL INCLUSIVE di Corina Schwingruber; si tratta di una cineasta svizzera molto abile e sottile nel manovrare i suoi personaggi/marionette coinvolti nei pesi specifici della Grande Navigazione.

Il linguaggio dei segni è un acquario doloroso in cui nuotano figure di rara intensità emotiva, ne fa fede la bionda e tenera bimba protagonista di THE SILENT CHILD a firma del britannico Chris Overton.

Assistiamo ad un lavoro dal grande impegno sociale che ci mostra il diverso e la sua incredibile ricchezza di risorse umane e spirituali.

Si allentano i toni grazie al bozzetto umoristico spagnolo a firma di Felix Colomer che con il suo SEA coglie la poesia all’interno di una situazione ironica; molto coordinate e plausibili le due squisite interpreti. Due donne, un metrò e qualcosa di sorprendente…

Realtà virtuale, che passione! Peccato che la presunzione umana di poter dominare la macchina non venga puntualmente disattesa con effetti esilaranti. Succede in BUG del francese Cedric Prevost.

ENTROPIA dell’autrice ungherese Flora Anna Buda ci conferma un adagio che portiamo avanti dagli albori della nostra manifestazione: lo sguardo femminile reca sempre con se il tutto e il suo contrario.

Ancora una donna dietro la macchina da presa per il cortometraggio VIA LATTEA; Valeria Rufo alza il termometro della tensione alle stelle in una storia di sassi gettati in mare e di violenza esacerbata.

Mai tematica fu più di scottante attualità: clandestini ed annessi recinti umani trascinati nel gorgo delle autostrade sotto gli occhi di un bambino che già non conosce più il morbido dell’infanzia; il corto si chiama NIGHT SHADE di Shady El-Hamus.

Dai tempi del vecchio e caro Melìes la luna è una signora argentata che sta molto in alto e ci fa sognare e che oltre tutto sorride quando si parla di lei in termini umoristici.

In LUNAR-ORBIT RENDEZVOUS della canadese Melanie Charbonneau una variopinta vicenda di coppia sulle vie siderali vi farà ridere e scoprire nuovi spunti relazionali.

Torniamo sui sentieri italiani con un’opera degna della massima stima: QUELLE BRUTTE COSE di Loris Giuseppe Nese, il cortometraggio ci palesa paesaggi di pasoliniana memoria, bambini che mal si destreggiano nella caverne psicologiche degli adulti mescolati a scene di ordinaria quotidianità.

Mentre la temperatura continua la sua opera di tortura a danno di noi poveri umani ecco un cubetto di ghiaccio horror di terrificante fattura MILK del canadese Santiago Menghini.

Un abbraccio fraterno da parte dei cinefili nei confronti di questo sadico burattinaio di sapienti spaventi.

Il profumo dello shampoo alla vaniglia della ragazza seduta accanto a noi è l’ultima impressione olfattiva di una serata bollente ma speciale, la prima del nostro ventennale.

Appuntamento a sabato sera.

He had both elegant gestures and poetry in words, a gentle and profound follower of the aesthetic of the marvellous found in very few cases. Franco Zeffirelli recently passed away and the emptiness left behind by a person traversing the illuminated avenues of opera, cinema and theatre as if he had been born only for this vocation is already felt.

An inexorably incandescent atmosphere in Piazza Verdi, the female team has brought together the deep green sea and jewels that recall the depth of marine corals.

And it is from the sea that Diego Muratore’s IL VECCHIO E IL MARE speaks; an interesting work that has nothing to do with Hemingway’s famous old man but much to do with the Trieste reality and with certain professional demands that no longer exist. The film was presented in the Special Events section.

Anyone who deeply loves cinema cannot fail to feel affection for Marilyn Monroe; this is taken into account by Italian author Maria Di Razza with her GOODBYE MARILYN. In a parallel universe the blonde Hollywood icon is not dead and gives herself in confession to a young admirer. Touching and surreal.

The three rugged-faced protagonists of TOMATIC by the French Christophe M. Saber, are the perfect embodiment of the proverb that crime does not pay, a nice delirium conducted with a sure hand.

Next, the competitive story of RONALDO from Recep Bozgoz flows fluently, where the still fresh and authentic eyes of a teenager revive the myth of football even in a distant and remote environment.

The diplomatic environment is undoubtedly a world apart with its own rules and its exceptions, which cannot always be decoded by non-experts. SKIP DAY from the couple Lucas and Bresnan fits into the narrative strand of psychological analysis, conducted with mastery.

Sweden is notoriously a cold country but its cinema certainly radiates warmth and poetry especially when it flies through the seasons of life like a book. The Swedish author Mons Berthas takes care of this with her ISLE OF CAPRI.

Next we are instead attentive spectators in the animated theatre of SWEET NIGHT by Belgian director Lia Bertels, where funny animal figurines move in a Lilliputian world struggling with supply problems.

The fascination of cinema is to continually ask the viewer questions, fostering a game of references and pointers. FIVE MINUTES TO SEA by the Russian author Natalia Mirzoyan reminded us of a certain Peter Weir-like atmosphere with her temporal scans and strange use of words as if they came from ancestral depths.

COMMENTS comes from Germany and we can easily see that we are in front of the black and white keys of a verbal piano where forms and styles of the word chase each other in a fascinating architecture. A work flying the Teutonic flag, behind the camera is Jannis Alexander Kiefer.

Blonde and inebriated by their own youth, the protagonists of FAUVE by the Canadian Jeremy Comte live on skirmishes and confrontations preserving that “saliva di bimbo” of which the great Giorgio Albertazzi spoke.

PATCHWORK is a good work by the Spanish Maria Manero Muro on the ever-current theme of the body and our acceptance of it.

We end with a bang thanks to the animalistic/human parable from director Katarzyna Gondek: DEER BOY is a black fairy tale about hunters and nature’s games with a child halfway between human and animal. Strongly animalistic, it is a work of silence and tension.

Some absent-minded spectators have left a beautiful emerald green object on the chairs in front of us, whose function we ignore … Green and blue are our favourite colours that recall the sea which is just a stone’s throw away on this late June evening.

See you on Sunday evening.

Riccardo Visitin

20° ShorTSIFF – Diary of 28 june 2019

29 June 2019/0 Comments/in Diary 2019

Imagine a dimly lit elegant hall adorned with impressive art deco. Someone dressed in white passes by the big screen.

It’s clear to everyone that there’s a birthday to celebrate: ShorTS’ twentieth birthday.

After already seeing such merriment and family presence at the Festival presentation in Palazzo Gopcevich, we then have the Festival’s inauguration of the first evening in Piazza Verdi, where the incandescent heat hazes.

It kicks off with the tragicomic and surreal events involving the protagonists of ALL INCLUSIVE by Corina Schwingruber; a very subtle Swiss filmmaker skilled in manoeuvring her characters / puppets involved in the various burdens that the Great Navigation brings.

Sign language is a whole new universe in which you can discover profound and unexpected emotional intensity, as seen through the loveable child protagonist of THE SILENT CHILD directed by the British Chris Overton. The audience witnesses a great social commitment that shows us the impact of learning this language and its incredible value.

The tone is then lightened by the funny Spanish sketch directed by Felix Colomer. MAR captures poetry within an ironic situation; the two exquisite protagonists coincidentally collide in a completely plausible circumstance. Two women, a metro and something surprising…

Virtual reality, how exciting! Too bad that we can’t actually control the technology as well as we thought we could. This is the chilling yet humorous plot that unwinds in BUG by the French Cedric Prevost.

In ENTROPY, Hungarian Flora Anna Buda tells us the old adage that we have always told ourselves: the female gaze carries itself and its opposite.

VIA LATTEA: a woman behind the camera for this short; Valeria Rufo raises tensions between protagonists in a story of stones thrown into the sea and escalating violence.

A very current and heated crisis: illegal immigrants and human enclosures dragged into the whirlpool of highways through the eyes of a child who no longer knows the tenderness of childhood. This is the short NIGHT SHADE by Shady El-Hamus.

The moon is like a silver lady who stands high and turns us into dreamers; she smiles most when we speak of her fondly. LUNAR-ORBIT RENDEZVOUS by Canadian Melanie Charbonneau is a colourful story of an unlikely couple that will make you laugh and discover new ways of seeing relationships.

Loris Giuseppe Nese takes us back to Italian roots with a highly commendable work. THOSE BAD THINGS is a short that reveals the landscapes of Pasolinian memory, children who lose themselves in the psychological caverns of adult life.

The chilling tone continues with Santiago Menghini’s MILK, where a young teen goes into the kitchen to fetch a glass of milk. But upon encountering his mother, we discover things are not as they seem… The puppet master of fear was met with admiration from cinephiles in the audience.

As the night closes, the smell of someone’s vanilla shampoo blows lightly in the warm wind. It certainly has been a special way to start the celebration of our twentieth birthday.

See you on Saturday evening.

Riccardo Visitin