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Believe it or not this is the last day of Concorto 2017!
We begin with the screening at 6pm in Palazzo Ghizzoni Nasalli with the shorts made during the “Audiovisiva” workshop with Tomás Sheridan, followed by the shorts realized during the project “El cine es un puente en el oceano”.
The Closing Ceremony will take place in Piacenza, at the Arena Daturi, at 9 pm. We will screen the marvellous movies of two of the jurors, the directors Anna Budanova and David Krippendorff and then we will proclaim the winners of this sixteenth edition of Concorto: the Asino d’Oro, the Jury Grand Prix, the Audience Award, the Youth Jury Award and the BORDERS Award.
And since we’ve really enjoyed reviewing shorts for the whole week, we’ve reviewed even these last three out-of-competition shorts!
And, last but not least, our “critic’s picks”, the Asinello d’Oro award from the AsinoVola newsroom!

Margherita Fontana – Fatima Marie Torres and the Invasion of Space Shuttle Pinas 25 – Carlo Francisco Manatad
“A short with a title longer than the film itself, Fatima Marie Torres has a great photography and it uses the Christmas lights in a hilarious and never-seen-before way. Out of this world.”

Yorgos Kostianis – Calamity – Maxime Feyers

“An exquisitely claustrophobic film boasting barnstorming performances clad in grand dramaturgic and directorial aesthetic.”

Carlotta Magistris – Valparaiso – Carlo Sironi
“For its capacity to communicate and talk about a delicate topic in an effective and original way, my Asinello d’Oro goes to Valparaiso by Carlo Sironi”.

Elena Saltarelli – Railment – Shunsaku Hayashi
In the heterogeneous short films ensemble seen during this very busy week, what that struck me most was Railment, the animated short film directed by Shunsaku Hayashi. Delicate, fierce, redundant, oneiric, essentially sad: a deep cut into the social epidermis, a sudden awareness most unwelcome but necessary that makes the dystopian future prophesied by Lewis, Orwell and Huxley not so far away.

And here follows a bunch of interviews, enjoy!

Obida – Anna Budanova
seen by Margherita Fontana

Here at Concorto as a member of the jury, Anna Budanova presents Obida (The Wound), an animated short film from 2012. The wound of the title is the one inflicted by a group who mocks a little girl because of her physical appearance. The child reacts by giving substance to her delusion: a scribble sketched on the ground to turn down the frustration becomes a monster that will progressively take control on her life. The autobiographical source of inspiration is shown by the choice of giving to the act of drawing the power to create an imagery where to find solace. Through a crackling and delicate drawing Budanova looks with tenderness to the ones who surrender to violence by taking shelter in their own fears. Worthy to be remembered is the attention given to the sounds that animate the places lived by the main character, which help in creating a disturbing and but also touching atmosphere.

Sredi cerni voln – Anna Budanova
seen by Elena Saltarelli

According to an ancient Russian legend, the souls of drowned people become sea animals. This animated short film, directed by Anna Budanova, elegantly dances around this idea, evolving and creating other concepts: love, violence, desire, innocence. The main character is a seal-girl, forcibly taken by a man; she then became his wife, and now she looks nostalgically at the sea from which she was ripped away. This metaphor encloses all the complexity of the human soul, permanently chained to remembrances, and also the complexity of an aggressive love, that hides the fear of loneliness. Supported by an extremely characteristic drawing-line that fully restores the inhospitality of the Russian steppe, this short film enchants for the it simplicity wherewith it gives voice to hard and conflicting feelings; as in a byliny it involves us in a viewing in which we appreciate both the formal side strengthened by a ritual aesthetic, and the meanings that – under the snow and the ice – it hides.

Nothing escapes my eyes – David Krippendroff
seen by Yorgos Kostianis

“Neither you are you, nor home is home”— with this poetic quote from Mahmoud Darwish, David Krippendorff opens his dramatic directorial depiction of a silent transformation of a place and a human being, both subjected to the melancholy of conforming. We see a woman sitting in front of a dressing room mirror, in the process of shedding one identity for another. While she reluctantly removes her ancient Egyptian costume and make-up in exchange for a modern wardrobe, the camera reveals that the setting is, actually, an empty parking garage at the Opera Square in Cairo. The short constitutes an allegorical allusion to the downfall of the Royal Opera House, where Verdi’s Aida premiered in 1871; exactly one hundred years later the opera house was destroyed by fire and replaced by a multi-storeyed parking garage. The film features no dialogues and is backed solely by a musical excerpt from Verdi’s Aida whose lyrics, much like the film itself, express the difficulties of being loyal to cultural identity without succumbing to the pressure of conformity. This dichotomy between personal and urban transformation touches on the city’s colonial past and contemporary globalism and the disorientated environment and gradual identity loss that they have brought upon it.

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