Migranti Film Festival
Migranti is a three-day film festival, to be held at the University of Gastronomic Sciences campus in Pollenzo and in Bra from June 10 to 12, 2017 and dedicated to issues relating to migrations, particularly second generations, coexistence, identity and multiculturality. Now more than ever, understanding the world in which we live demands a fuller understanding of the implications of migrations and movement, of how things can change and what role we can play.
The intention of the Migranti project is to bring together a group of writers, researchers and directors, some migrants, others not, who are working to establish to a participatory way of communicating that allows the inclusion of “other” memories within the shared heritage of national and transnational memory and at the same time records the migratory processes currently underway. One of the project’s objectives is to represent the diversity and the subjective experience within migration. To this end, migrant directors will be taking part in discussions after the screenings and sharing their perspectives, poised between storytelling and self-narration, with the aim of creating a platform for debate, support and action.
The competition sections within the Migranti festival will give space to new languages and most of all to the audiovisual practice of participatory video, which represents a methodology more concerned with the process of producing the video than the final product. Participatory video is a tool for interpreting reality, which encourages the involvement of communities and modifies the perception they have of themselves. The entire methodology is based on the creation of a group, the absence of a leader and the development of individual talents. The aim of participatory video is to produce social change or individual transformation. This process can have a real impact, allowing a group or a community to develop their own solution to their own problems and to communicate their own needs and ideas.
In between film screenings there will be round-table discussions with migrants, academics, artists, professionals and students from all over the world who will be exploring the issues raised by the films and sharing social concerns and reflections on society from new perspectives.
The Migranti screenings will be free, and some will be organized by University of Gastronomic Sciences students. Through stories of journeys, people, hopes, encounters between migrants past and present, tragedies and successes, the festival wants to make public opinion aware of the real extent of the current migratory phenomenon and show reality from a different perspective.
The theme chosen for 2017 is the universal value of coexistence, represented by ways of understanding each other through different cultures, languages and religions and their minglings, including gastronomic.
Six feature-length films in competition will be screened, as well as eight shorts and other films out of competition. Space will be given not just to screenings, but also concerts, the food of migrant communities, press reviews, workshops and encounters with academics and other intellectuals,