Even in the highlights, Arcipelago Festival reveals its modernity: playing with the definition of our “2.0” era, the “2.3 edition” (not simply the 23rd edition, but the third year of the second course) of the festival is very effective in focusing on the topics of the contemporaneity and on the latest experiments in visual arts, 3D, videogames and narrative innovations in the short-films environment.
Arcipelago, dedicated to the new audio-visual languages (expecially the out-of-standard ones, like short movies and web-series), has been searching for new talents in the Italian and European scene, offering this year a very rich programme to its public, who was able to attend every screening free of charge.
"Essaie de mourir jeune " di Morgan Simon |
|
Divided into several categories, this edition lasted over a week: from the 4th to the 10th of November.The main contest was The short planet, the International Competition of Short Films and New Images, which presented 21 interesting short movies from all over the world and which was won by Essaie de mourir jeune (Morgan Simon, France), a striking tale about a father and a son who share the night of the boy’s 25th birthday revealing that age is not synonymous with maturity. Simon draws two unpleasant charachters, who seem constantly to bond and then detach. The close encounter with the girl offers the tension between them the chance to explode, showing the real personalities of the men: Vincent wants so desperately to be loved by his father but finally understands that sometimes it is better to let some people go if they are deleterious; Hervé is truly attached to his son but he is uncapable to make room for him. Maybe that’s because he is the one who is afraid to grow up?
|
 |
Trailer |
The bigger picture (Daisy Jacobs, UK), about two brothers who have to decide the future of their old mother, was awarded with the Special Prize of the Jury because of its combined tecnique of stop-motion and painted animation. For this particular tecnique this short movie was candidated to the 2015 Oscar. Surely the choice for the winners had to be hard because there were some really great short movies in the competition. The bravest, the boldest (Moon Molson, USA) is one of them. Through the delicate mission of two US Army officers (one of them is a chapelan), we are made to face the horror and the pain of a young mother (extraordinary Sameerah Luqmaan-Harris) who understands the terrible piece of news which is waiting for her and which she does not want to hear: maybe if they don’t tell her, if she doesn’t hear the horrible, it will not be happened. Her fear turns in an abscondence: she runs away from them seeking shelter in the terrace (where she meets a young boy in whom she can sees her son) and then in the basement. Vertical geography has a metaphorical role: at first she looks for air, memories, heaven and maybe God to face the truth; then she hides at the lowest level of the house, that is the lowest point of her grief, where the horror strikes, even without words.
"Sonderkommando" Nicola Ragone |
|
One of the most touching and artistically remarkable short-movies was Sonderkommando (Nicola Ragone, Italia), which tells an unspoken love story between two prisoners in a lager during WWII. Ragone’s ability to create a comunication just using their eyes and their looks is amazing: there are no words between them, nevertheless a whole story is told, from the first encounter to the tragic epilogue. This is a story of hope and love, where feelings light the horror of a dark place (and Daniele Ciprì’s photography is exquisite). It’s important to mention also ZAR (Heat; Bartosz Kruhlik, Poland) for the ability of this young Polish director to create increasing tension from a normal and peaceful situation with close ups and shots that frame the characheters – often from a subjective point of view – and make us think of the possibility that something terrible may happen to everybody, everywhere.
|
|
Trailer |
World Wide Series, the International Web Series Competition, was won by LARPs (Julian Stamboulieh, Canada), which follows a group of friends and their journey through both their real lives and the imaginary ones they lead in a Live Action - Role Playing game, while the Special Prize of the Jury was assigned to Cortos de Gigantes (Sol Rietti, Argentina), an original animated series about the lives of famous directors.
The Italian movies had their own category (ConCorto, National Short Films Competition), which was won by Totems (Sarah Arnold), a tough movie dealing with social memories and family ties, while the Special Prize of the Jury was assigned to Ardeidae (Daniele Tucci, Chiara Faggionato, Corrado Chiatti), a dialogue between the present and the past of Venice shown by images of the decadence of the landscape synched with the words of an audioguide who celebrates the beauty of the Italian city. The idea is not new but it is effective, also because the eyes seeing everything are the ones of some Japanese tourists. It is worth mentioning two more movies. Bloodhound (Tommaso Landucci) is a high tension noir/thriller set in the woods, with the main charachter trying to figure out if his life is in danger after running over a dog with his car; L’ultimo viaggio (Valeria Luchetti), is one of the few comic short-movies that’s not built upon gags, but whose funniness is conveyed by the script and the acting (Marina Massironi and Gigio Alberti). Moreover, even if it’s a story of black humor, it makes us laugh and smile and it has a poetic message, too.
|
|
"Totem" Sarah Arnold
|
Trailer |
|
"Human Installation" Kyrahm, Julius Kaiser |
|
The last prize assigned was the Best video to the meditation upon the meaning of the sexual identity HUMAN INSTALLATION I/Obsolescenza del genere (Kyrahm, Julius Kaiser), in the LOVE MEETINGS 2.0 Video Competition. This contest was an important event because it was a tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini, author of Comizi d’amore (1964), a documentary about the love, sex and sexuality of the Italian people in the ‘60s. Nine works of art were selected by the jury as the modern representatives of the studies on the themes that Pasolini focused on decades ago, in order to understand how much (and if) Italian society has changed.
|
|
Trailer |
This competition originated from a very important anniversary that was celebrated in 2015: the 40th year of Pasolini’s death. Arcipelago festival decided to honour the great director, hipster and writer with the screening of some beautiful and quite rare documentaries and videos about him in the section Pasolini visto dalla luna: uno sguardo straniero.
Another anniversary (two, actually), another hommage: Orson Welles was born 100 years ago (in 1915) and died 30 years ago (1985). Arcipelago could not ignore these events and chose to honour the great director with the Italian previews of the six episodes of the wonderful TV series Around the world with Orson Welles (1955), just remastered in HD by the British Film Institute. Welles’ humor guides us in different European countries to discover some traditions (the basque pelote, the bullfight, …) and to meet some “common but extraordinary” people in Spain, France, Austria and England. A must-see.
The last celebration was the 70th anniversary of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s death, with the screening of the documentary about his life To Love without Demand (Christian Braad Thomsen, 2015).
|
|
"Comizi d'amore" Pier Paolo Pasolini
|
Trailer |
|
Arcipelago this year had also a focus on the Manetti Bros., the Italian way to the “film genres”. Movies like Zora la vampira (2000), Piano 17 (2005), L’arrivo di Wang (2011) and Paura (2012) represent a kind of cinema which is “entertainment”: pleasant to watch, even if naive in some moments, they are written and directed following the rules of the genres of the typical USA cinema. It was worth screening them again 
|
