“Captain’s Log”, Fourth Evening

Maremetraggio, Chapter Four: Europe’s turn. With the film shorts screened during the evening, the Festival dressed itself with the colours of internationality.

After a lively sketch between the host Ando Merkù and the event’s official photographer, Claudio Tommasini, the cinema marathon started with “Baldosas” by the Spanish author, Marc Andrés: a bitter and grotesque satire on the cost of living and the prices of homes seen through the disquieting encounters of a couple of newly weds.

A blend of literary quotes (the most obvious of which Bram Stoker’s Dracula) and wild paradoxes, this film short reaffirms the taste of young Spanish directors for fantasy and oneiric atmospheres.

Belarus is the country of origin of “My zivjom na kraju” by Victor Asliuk: a work of great social impact on the vicissitudes of a rural village located on the banks of a river.
Water is not only a natural element, but also a narrative one and the subject of physical and moral vanity are the peculiar traits of a fiery and all but consolatory work.

The next marvellous film short, “Small Avalanches” by Birgitte Staermose, flies the Danish flag. It is based on an original story by Joyce Carol Oates.

It is a rarefied and tormenting work about the meeting of a teenager with an unfledged attractiveness with a man who is at first kind and then becomes a threat. In narrative terms this film short was definitely one of the Festival’s best.

The subject of love and romanticism was also dealt with by the director Frederic Maromoud in his “L’escalier”, which tells of the sweet age of puppy love between young teenagers and is inspired by the lesson of great masters like Francois Truffaut.

After the screening of the film shorts and the visit of pluvious Jove (water or rain as you prefer to call it is a sort of embarrassing relative who every now and then comes to visit us) came the turn of the Ippocampo section with the film “Il Natale Rubato” – Christmas Stolen – by Pino Tordiglione, who was in the audience.

The film is a sort of allegoric painting, which basically rests on two descriptive pillars: on the one hand, the drama of a father in dire straits who must save his daughter from a serious disease at all costs and, on the other, the tragicomic uprising of a town which reacts to those who cruelly deprived them of their nativity scene.

Interesting especially for the focus on various aspects of Southern Italian culture, the film can also rely on an especially sharp photography, which blends well with the oneiric aspect of the story. The leading actor is the esteemed actor, Patrizio Rispo, the star of the Italian TV soap “Un posto al sole”.

His arrival unleashed the enthusiasm of the younger members of the audience. Then the director took the floor and dedicated his film to all Italian fathers and to the city of Trieste. The next appointment is this evening for a new load of films.

Riccardo Visintin

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