Skip to main content

The awesome Salone degli Amici dell’Arte welcomes you to this Monday at Concorto starting from 6 p.m. with the screenings of the short films by Alta Formazione in Cinema Documentario e Sperimentale of the University of Parma, in collaboration with Cineteca of Bologna.

We will then be waiting for you at 9 p.m. at Parco Raggio for the screenings of the films in competition, and then in the Greenhouse for the second part of Comicomedy and Ubik.

Will you look at me – Shuli Hang
As seen by Margherita Fontana

Presented at the 61st Semaine de la Critique of Cannes in 2022, Shuli Hung’s work is a powerful portrait of the author’s relationship with his mother and his family of origin. The short film is a synthesis of a long-lasting conversation between Shuli and his mother, that is yet to approve his homosexuality, and the footage is recorded by the author during his youth in his hometown. The found footage effect, whose vintage attractiveness pairs extremely well with the visual habits of our contemporary times, somehow dilutes the extremely psychological and emotional violence of the dialogue. 

Maestrale – Nico Bonomolo
As seen by Margherita Fontana

A man, reduced to the stereotype of a white-collar worker, sees a boat for sale while going to work. The mistral will make it sail the seas towards the imagination of a new future, of a new connection, that is extremely similar to the regret of a lost relationship. Winner of the David of Donatello for the best short film, Maestrale is an intimate journey into the fabric of the protagonist’s memory and perception, and these two elements interact and mix together in this sentimental rumination. The formal synthesis is obtained thanks to the expedient of black and white, where the whites act like a master, and it invites a standing interaction between surfaces: the level of memory and that of dreams. 

#31# Unknown Call – Ghyzlène Boukaila
As seen by Virginia Marcolini

Wandering through the streets of a city in ruins, this film explores the decay of this non-place in the quiet of the night. The only thing that interrupts it is the sound of a recorded voice, that abruptly introduces us to this post-reconstructional world and to the authoritarian laws that rule it. But a new voice emerges in opposition, coming from a disguised call. As if we were through the telephone cables, we slide into a call in an encrypted and abstract space-time, where a new identity finds its place. Silence makes room for music, and desolation is contrasted by a shared and cathartic dance. 

Airhostess 737 – Thanasis Neofotistos
Visto da Virginia Marcolini

In competition at Locarno Film Festival 2022, Air Hostess-737 lands in preview in Italy at Concorto Film Festival 2022. Protagonist, and the only character really framed, is Vanina, a flight attendant, that we follow from beginning to end on a rather turbulent journey. The narrative tension is built minute after minute, transforming an apparently relaxed and intentionally comic initial situation in a psychological thriller. Conceived in a dream by the director Thanasis Neofotistos, the film can perfectly recreate those confused and distressing atmospheres typical of the dream world. The cold and blinding lights, the hissing sounds and the quick editing reveal, in a claustrophobic escalation, the – ever closer- disturbance of the protagonist. 

On Xerxe’s Throne – Evi Kalogiropoulou
As seen by Anna Vullo

At a shipyard in Perama, below Mount Egaleo, from which the Persian king Xerxes is said to have watched the defeat of his fleet, there is only one rule: no touching. This dystopian rule started out as a precaution; now it seems the only way to keep the mind from drifting. Workers live in such a state of incommunicability that petty bickering has become the closest thing to touching. The communicative distance between the workers is made very clear by the short movie’s photography, which places them in such a way that their gazes never cross. The arrival of two new characters shakes the balance of the construction site and teaches the protagonist, who had always taken everything for granted, that perhaps another way of experiencing human interactions still exists.

Burial of a life as a young girl – Maité Sonnet
As seen by Chiara Ghidelli

Axelle is a young girl who is facing a heartbreak from which she struggles to recover. Hiding the discomfort during her sister’s bachelorette party, she will soon find herself to go from silent viewer to be an absolute protagonist of her new story. With the patina and the colors of a real fairy tale, Burial of Life as a Young Girl transforms a bildungsroman in a fairy tail populated by nymphs blocked in unhealthy relationships and lives that no longer belong to them. Desperately looking to maintain a semblance of poetry in a life that has nothing of the fable anymore, the girls enjoy fasti, banquets and modern castles, towards the inevitable acceptance of a reality dominated by issues impossible to ignore. Just Axelle, lost in an enchanted forest, seems to be reaching a new beginning.

Leave a Reply