The seven Italian shorts
- Alice by Chiara Leonardi
- Atlante 1783 / Atlas 1783 by Maria Giovanna Cicciari
- Colazione sull’erba / Luncheon on the Grass by Edoardo Ferraro
- dodici pagine / Twelve Pages by Riccardo Caruso, Roberto Tenace, Luigi Lombardi, Elisabetta Falanga
- Era ieri / It Was Yesterday by Valentina Pedicini
- Notturno / Nocturne by Fatima Bianchi
- Vanilla by Rossella Inglese
Special Event – Opening Short
- Pagliacci / Clowns by Marco Bellocchio
SIC, 31 + 1. Another sign of continuity and of an even stronger commitment towards Italian cinema. A synergy with an important partner such as Instituto Luce Cinecittà, and a mission: to look for the Italian cinema of tomorrow. Facing a multiplication of places and modes of production, the most innovative and passionate Italian cinema exists in trajectories that are dictated by a vortex that redesign this panorama. By probing the transformation of young Italian productions, we found new territories and horizons of a cinema without melancholy and inferiority complexes. Very young authors who are able to move along the entire expressive spectrum of contemporary cinema. Fiction, documentary, essay films, experimentation and beyond. A panorama of enthusiastic possibilities where the only rules are talent and creativity. A bet that offers one certainity: identifying today the authors of tomorrow’s Italian cinema.
From the ghostly family diaries of Alice to the sentimental topography of Atlante 1783, going through the coming of age of Era ieri, the fantastic fabulation of dodici pagine, the ‘dejeuner sur l’herbe stoner’ of Colazione sull’erba, arriving to the lyric abstraction of Notturno and the discovery of another eros by Vanilla; the seven selected shorts offer themselves as a position taking, formal and creative, of great importance.
Sposoring the birth of Sic@Sic, is the new short-film by Marco Bellocchio, Pagliacci, directed by the Maestro together with the students of the laboratory Fare cinema of Bibbio. Pagliacci, a surprising and enthusiastic film interpreted by the late Lucia Ragni, is a landmark that allows us to observe Bellocchio’s cinema through a new angle, and rethink its countless instinctive and insurrectional drives.
Between Marco Bellocchio and the young authors presented by Sic@Sic we create an ideal bridge that allow us to think about Italian cinema as a dialogue between the urgency of a living tradition and the imperatives of a future that is to be invented and played with entirely.
Giona A. Nazzaro
General Delegate – 31. Venice Internatioal Film Critics’ Week
The distribution of first and second features is one of the activities developed by Instituto Luce Cineciettà. It is clear that this is a necessary activity in a panorama of distribution that is characterized by a very strong commercial antagonism. Accompaning the films, there are waves of new generations of authors that manage to affirm themselves: Sydney Sibilia, Piero Messina, Laura Bispuri, Carlo Lavagna, Gabriele Mainetti… They play in all fronts: from box office to festivals, to critics’ awards. What unites them is the story of their previous years, of how they got to their first feature, of all the time spent trying to make themselves being noticed, before a producer could manage in his turn to involve financers in their projects.
The collaboration of the Instituto Luce Cinecittà with the 31. Venice International Film Critics’ Week was born exactly from this need to promote young Italian authors who did not yet reached the long feature film: seven short filmmakers will arrive to the 73. Mostra Internazionale di Arte Cinematografica to make themselves be noticed to a national and international level.
The selection and programming of the shorts made by Critics’ Week, will then be promoted abroad by the Instituto Luce Cinecittà in the various initiatives around the world that promote Italian cinema. For these young filmmakers starts, or is confirmed, a voyage, an important passage from promises to a real present.
Carla Cattani
Istituto Luce Cinecittà – Promotion of Contemporary Cinema
30.08 — 09.09