21/09/2007

The first edition of Salina Doc Fest opened this morning with a greeting from Minister of Culture Francesco Rutelli. This new event of “cinema of the real”, hosted through September 23 on Salina (in the Eolic archipelago) and run by documentary filmmaker Giovanna Taviani (whose uncle and father Paolo and Vittorio Taviani shot an episode of Kaos on the island), wants to be “not simply a showcase but a workshop of contemplation on the state and destiny of the documentary”.

At the core of the festival lies the thematic competition (whose title Il mio Paese is taken from the Daniele Vicari film). Its nine selected titles are united by a “thirst for reality after decades of intimism”: from Bruno Ulmer’s Welcome Europe and Can Tunis by Paco Toledo and José Gonzales Morandi (both seen at this year’s Pesaro Film Festival) to Il passaggio della linea by Pietro Marcello, they all share contemporary man's sense of bewilderment and loss.

There are numerous Italians in competition: Il fantasma di Corleone by Marco Amenta, on Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano; Pippo Delbono’s autobiographical Grido [+see also:
trailer
film profile]; Centravanti nato by Gianclaudio Guiducci (on the corruption within Italian football, as told by its key figures); the journey to Iraq of Primavera in Kurdistan by Stefano Savona; Nisida – Crescere in prigione by Lara Rastelli (on a prison for minors in Naples); and La persona De Leo N. by Alberto Vendemmiati, on the difficult conquest of a sexual identity.

The €3000 prize will be awarded by a jury comprising film critics Bruno Torri and Alberto Crespi, journalist Giancarlo Licata and directors Marco Bertozzi and Pasquale Scimeca.

Flanking the competition, Finestra sul Presente offers Vincenzo Marra’s The Session is Open and Agostino Ferrente’s The Orchestra of Piazza Vittorio [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], while Reperti di Memoria brings to audiences classic documentaries by Roberto Rossellini (Undersea Fantasy) and Vittorio De Seta, and short films produced by Panaria Film, the historic, large Sicilian studio led by Prince Francesco Alliata di Villafranca.

(Translated from Italian)