To the orchid thieves

1983-2017. The festival was originally founded by the ACLI and featured emerging world cinema filmmakers. Later, the Sulmonacinema Association brought together different artistic directions and countless enthusiastic volunteers. Subsequently, the Young Italian Cinema Competition was founded and now the festival features national and international short films. An anthological exhibition of information and promotional material from the past 35 editions is also on display at the Gran Caffè Letterario, the latest commercial gamble in a city that is struggling to get back on its feet.
There are forty-eight works in this year’s competition: twenty-four international shorts, twelve national shorts, eight music videos and four documentaries. These films celebrate the power of diversity representing the present with depth of vision and sharpness of feelings. They tell of the ability to comprehend the view of others and interpret the metamorphic universe of distant stories. Finding a solution means following that path of discovery via the different cinemas which bring the renewal of one’s inner reality.
For the first time in 35 years there is a jury of professional critics under the age of 35. The perspectives of the jury align with those of the producers. Finally, the vision of young directors will be subjected to an accurate analysis by equally young evaluators. There are four feature films.
“A CIAMBRA” is the portrait of Pio – a boy in search of a point of reference and of loving support. This film is an Italian Oscar nomination and is a film of great pictorial sensibility. It uses the directorial approach of combining documentary and fiction which the best international writers have been using for years. “SICILIAN GHOST STORY” is a fantasy set in the mafia world and told in the style of a dream. The black tale was well received at the Semaine de la Critique in Cannes. “L’ORDINE DELLE COSE” shows how to reconcile the state law with human instinct in order to help migrants in difficulty arriving from all over Africa. “TUTTO QUELLO CHE VUOI” is a comedy with the lead role played by well-known director Giuliano Montaldo. Montaldo plays an exceptionally humane and sensitive poet who meets an ignorant young man from Trastevere. The film recounts an adventure resulting from the interactions between this strange, intergenerational couple. An event film, “EXHIBIT HUMAN”, is the first Italian documentary about ‘plastination’. The anatomical machines are created by strange experiments where the human bodies are manipulated after death in an attempt to prevent their natural, biological decomposition. The mysterious inventor of the technique, Gunther Von Hagens, exhibits these sculptures in what is one of the most visited exhibitions in the world: “BODY WORLDS”. A journey of speech and vision, “DISPLACEMENT – NEW TOWN NO TOWN”, with photos by Giovanni Cocco and texts by Caterina Serra is presented by the MAW Art Gallery (Men Art Work) and depicts the beginning of displacement. The first stage of the project features cities which are disrupting the traditional centre-periphery relationship thus changing the sense of individual and social life. It is dedicated to L’Aquila, a city which symbolises the loss of structure and the dispersal of the community.
A body painting performance by Matteo Arfanotti. Italian champion in 2012 and then world champion in 2013, Arfanotti was following the artistic path of a figurative painter when he was struck by the extraordinary interpretative possibilities offered by metamorphic works on the human body. A video installation inspired by Ovid with strongly contemporary references in the year of the bimillennium of the poet’s death.
In addition, there is again this year a joint project with the youngsters from local schools participating in the SIFF Students’ Prize. And to close, the AFTER FESTIVAL entertainment at Soul Kitchen is rich in quality performances and evocative sounds: Angelini / Cortese, Carocci / Colandrea, Max Dedo and Keet & More.