SATURDAY, NOV. 26TH - LA COMPAGNIA
3:00 pm – Italian competition
MANI NOSTRE
TALKING HANDS
by Caterina Pecchioli
Italy, Germany, Sweden, 2016, 64’
What is the relationship of Italians with corruption like? The film-maker travels across Italy from its northern extreme to the southern one, asking this question to her fellow citizens. The result is a series of unexpected conversations and testimonies, both amusing and tragic, that make up a collective portrait where the boundary between right and wrong is blurred. The eclectic Italian landscape, a character in its own right, is a counterpoint to the chorus of voices from several generations.
4:30 pm – The trades of cinema: homage to Sergio Oksman
LA ESTETICIÉN
by Sergio Oksman
Brazil, Spain, 2004, 96’
A woman is filmed during her daily chores. She describes her life while stock footage shows the historic events in which she was involved: the war, deportation, Auschwitz, from which she survived. A classic documentary. Suddenly, this stops and another film takes shape, putting on screen the work of cinema on the mystery of storytelling. Arresting the interview mechanism, Oksman deals with the boundary between memory and imagination, fabulation and testimony.
6:30 pm – International Competition
WIĘZI
CLOSE TIES
by Zofia Kowalewska
Poland, 2016, 18’
After an 8-year separation, during which the man has lived with another woman, Zofia’s grandparents go back to living together. On top of this, preparations for the celebration of their wedding anniversary are under way. Their granddaughter, the film director, films them in their small apartment, a (single) space that becomes like a big mirror of their relationship thanks to the camerawork. The film casts a sweet, sympathetic gaze onto the couple’s daily life, in which old resentment and the awareness of not being able to live one without the other blend seamlessly in a loving embrace that resists time and the turbulences of life.
6:30 pm – Italian competition
CASTRO
by Paolo Civati
Italy, 2016, 82’
Castro was a squatter house in Rome, a refuge for the outcast, a home for many, owned by nobody. For more than ten years, if has offered a chance at life to many families. Once was tolerated, now it does not exist anymore. A one-year long shooting to disclose the daily life of a community who has lived in an extraordinary situation. Castro was like a Tower of Babel, speaking with a tongue that had a thousand accents and told a thousand stories of the thousand humankinds that found there a shelter.
9:00 pm – Hit me with music!
DAVID BOWIE, L’HOMME CENT VISAGES OU LE FANTÔME D’HÉROUVILLE
DAVID BOWIE, MAN WITH A HUNDRED FACES OR THE PHANTOM OF HÉROUVILLE
by Christophe Conte, Gaëtan Chataigner
France 2015 70’
A rich, multi-layered portrait of one of the most versatile, genial personalities of pop music, this film goes back on the fundamental steps in the career of David Bowie. The musical research carried out by the artist goes hand in hand with the creation – anything but extemporaneous – of so many characters that made their mark on his concert stages, from Ziggy Stardust to The Thin White Duke. A few emergent French artists (such as Jeanne Added, Mathieu Saïlaly, and Lou Doillon) contribute with beautiful covers of songs that will linger in collective memory for a very long time.
10:15 pm – In the battlefields: the cinema of Danielle Arbid
UN HOMME PERDU
A LOST MAN
by Danielle Arbid
France, Lebanon, 2007, 97’
Thomas Koré, a French photographer, travels all over the world in search of extreme experiences. He crosses the path of Fouad Saleh, a fugitive without a story or memory of his past. Nocturnal wanderers rambling between Syria and Jordan, they go through the waste land of commercial sex in motel rooms, in the remotest Arabic province. A film about the loss of the self, reminiscent of the photographic approach of Antoine D’Agata (also consultant for the script) who inspired the character of Thomas Koré.