Time for Greek cinema in Lecce

by Camillo de Marco

03/04/2007 - From April 17-22, Lecce will host the eighth edition of the European Cinema Festival, a showcase of the young directors and new forms of expression of European cinema that have trouble reaching the market.

The driving principle behind the selected films is to share and valorise those European film industries considered to be lacking in adequate resources.

The European features competition includes films of superb quality, which despite having received numerous awards at festivals are not finding proper distribution: Milena Andonova’s Monkeys in Winter (Bulgaria), Branko Schmidt’s The Melon Route (Croatia), Peter Schonau Fog’s The Art Of Crying [trailer] (Denmark), Viviane Candas’ Suzanne [trailer] (France), Christian Wagner’s Warchild [trailer] (Germany/Slovenia), Marco Simon Puccioni’s Riparo [trailer] (Italy), Joachim Trier’s Reprise [trailer, film focus] (Norway), Adam Guzinski’s The Boy on a Galloping Horse (Poland), Teresa Villaverde’s Trance [trailer] (Portugal), and Happy New Life [trailer] (Hungary) by Arpád Bogdán.

The festival will host directors and some of their actors with the aim of promoting their films and to take part in the forums following each screening.

The festival’s Italian star will be actress Valeria Golino, a few of whose films will be screened, including Respiro: Grazia’s Island [trailer] by Emanuele Crialese, Silvio Soldini’s The Acrobat and Mario’s War by Antonio Capuano.

A tribute to master Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos will open a week dedicated to the discovery and rediscovery of Greek films through numerous titles: Peppermint (Costas Kapakas), From the Snow (Sotiris Goritsas), Dying in Athens (Nikos Panayotopoulos), Soul Kicking (Yannis Economidis) and False Alarm (Katerina Evangelakou).

The focus on the emerging filmmakers of Italian cinema will include Smalltown, Italy by Stefano Mordini; Empty Eyes by Andrea Porporati and Apnea by Roberto Dordit, followed by a reportage by Gianni Minà, Italo Moscati’s docu-film Via Veneto Set and a conference on film production as a strategy for the promotion of a territory and co-productions as an instrument of integration between Euro-Mediterranean countries.

(Translated from Italian)