Articles by: Natasha Lardera

It is of extreme importance for any young person to find direction in life. Positive youth development, for example, is a term that refers to “the intentional efforts to provide opportunities for youth to enhance their interests, skills, and abilities into their adulthood.” Film, for example, is fun and unique   medium that helps a lot not just by developing creativity but also by helping kids open their eyes to what surrounds them. More and more events and showcases are created in the effort to help this development and one of the most successful examples of this is the Valsele International Film Festival.

The Valsele International Film Festival, this year in its fourth edition, is an innovative and dynamic artistic-cinematographic appointment held in the breathtaking Valle del Sele (Valley of Sele), a modern day oasis in the Salerno area in Campania. The festival, created by the director Carlo Fumo, involves, professionally and culturally, numerous local and international young people who show their interest and involvement in the social through film.

The “Valsele International Film Festival,” founded in 2009, has grown even more this year as it is spread through several different appointments It is indeed divided into “stages,” different events that include a screening and a tasting, and a final Award ceremony.

 Each stage represents a cine-gastronomic “salon” where a film in competition is presented with the participation of its director and cast. People are able to enjoy the show while savoring the scrumptious products of the area. The food is prepared by the best local chefs using only the most authentic and delicious products available.

The Award ceremony and the Social School Contest, a special event held in favor of young students with an interest in the social, will take place on November 3, 2012.

While we wait for such evening of talent and creativity, we had the opportunity to chat with the festival's founder and artistic director, Carlo Fumo. Fumo is a local director who was drawn to cinema from a young age. As a child born in a town surrounded by mountains, he recorded the beautiful views around him on paper by drawing original images. With time he realized that those images could tell more and thus he shot his first short film... he was only 16 when he created Il Monaco (The Monk).

Through the years he continued working on his projects then success arrived with the book Il Regista del Mondo (The World's Director), a work of global accusations where the 2001 Twin Towers terrorist attacks are also addressed. A short based on the book has been shot with the participation of some of Italy's most talented actors: Alessandro Haber, Gianmarco Tognazzi, Luca Ward, Lidia Vitale, Massimiliano Gallo and Naike Rivelli. There is a plan to develop a feature length film by 2014. In addition to his film projects, Fumo is always busy with the programming of the Valsele International Film Festival.

How was the festival born? And why did you chose the Valle del Sele?

The festival was created in 2009 as a cinema showcase to promote the Valle del Sele. The first location back then was Valva, specifically inside the breathtaking Villa D'Ayala, one of the 50 most beautiful residences in Italy as per MIBAC (Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Ministry of heritage and Cultural Activities). In 2011 we moved to Contursi Terme, a real paradise on earth with the purest thermal water in the country (as per the Ministry of Health). This year we move to Eboli, a town known to the world thanks to Carlo Levi and his novel Christ Stopped at Eboli (published in 1945, the book is a memoir of the author's time spent in exile in Lucania, after being arrested in connection with his political activism. In 1979, the book was adapted into a film, directed by Francesco Rosi). We are the guests of Valasele, Campania's largest sports arena. We needed a big place to welcome the ever increasing number of participants. This year there is an entrance fee as all money earned will be donated to Mentoring USA - Italia Onlus (Mentoring USA is a structured, site-based, mentoring organization that began as the first state-sponsored, school-based, one-on-one mentoring program in the country in 1987. Mentoring USA's mission is to create positive and supportive mentor relationships for youth ages 7-21, through a structured site-based model. Mentoring USA/Italia was founded in 1998. Over the twelve years of activity more than 8000 young Italians, working with as many volunteer Mentors, have benefited from the one-to-one method which is the basis of the educative intervention). The check with the total amount will be directly donated to Mentoring USA-Italia Onlus's president, and founder, Matilda Raffa Cuomo at the end of November at the World Forum for Child Welfare in Naples.

 
The festival's theme this year's is comedy, while in the past you addressed serious issues. How important is comedy in cinema and in life?
 
True, the previous topics were "Immigration" in 2009 (famous journalist Tito Stagno, mostly known for his reporting on space travel, was awarded with the Bronze Medal from the President of the Republic); "Fighting Camorra" in 2010 (the medal was awarded to Don Luigi Merola, a priest whose work is dedicated to fighting this a Mafia-type criminal organization, or secret society, originating in the region of Campania) and "Italy's 150th Anniversary" in 2011 (I was awarded by the president myself for the theme of the edition and the work I do). This year we picked comedy and although it is a less serious topic than the previous ones, we are still faithful to our interest in the social. This year's edition will introduce a new important chapter, the "School Contest," a competition where students from different schools will contribute to the screenings of 10 shorts (5 Italian and 5 foreign) that address social and cultural topics mostly directed to road safety education and civics.
 
The festival celebrates the heritage of the "Commedia Italiana," thanks to the contributions of Cristian De Sica and Gianmarco Tognazzi, the sons of those who made it great and eternal (Vittorio De Sica and Ugo Tognazzi). Our guest, actor Alessandro Siani embodies the rebirth of Italian comedy. In a moment of crisis like the one we are living through there is a need to make people laugh, and make them think through humor by producing original and exportable films, such as "Il Postino" "Mediterraneo" and a few more, considering that in the past few years the country has produced demented comedies that are not easily understandable outside of their country of origin. Alessandro and I are working on a project in New York and Naples: an original and entertaining comedy with social and historical nuances on the two cities. If Alessandro decides to take part I will then present it to John Turturro when I will see him at the award ceremony in November. They would be the perfect on-screen pair for this international comedy.
 
How did you select the films that are in the festival?
 

As mentioned earlier, we looked for those comedies that are easily exportable. While for the School Contest we focused on social issues pertaining to a young audience. We are still working on the final selection. Our jury is made up of great personalities of the Italian film industry: the President, Remigio Truocchio (AGIS), Gianmarco Tognazzi (Actor), Orfeo Orlando (Actor and Director), Claudio Di Mauro (Editor), Luca Ward (Actor), Emma Perrelli (Executive, Youth Department), Luciana Della Fornace (President AGIScuola), Sergio Cuomo (President Mentoring USA-Italia Onlus) Martino Melchionda (Mayor of Eboli), Annarita Bruno (Education Councillorm Eboli) Marco Graziaplena (Director of Photography - Teacher CSC), Giuseppe Alessio Nuzzo (President Social World Film Festival), Adriano Aponte (Composer), Gaetano Carito (Sound Engineer), Simone Bracci (Journalist and Director at Film4Life) Michele Cuozzo (Honorary President of Valsele International Film Festival), Roberta Inarta (Director Scuola di Cinema of Naples) Fabrizio Ferrari (Artistic Director - Rome Independent Film Festival) M. Giuseppe Cascella (Artist),Valter D'Errico (Producer and Actor).

 
Tell us about the importance of the Social School Contest and of cinema in a social context
 

It is extremely important to teach kids to appreciate good cinema and some specific social topics. Our jobs allow us to create stories that address issues of primary importance reaching an audience of all ages, but mostly of a young age. Today, in Italy especially, so many values have been lost. Civics and domestic affairs are rarely taught in school and because of scarce resources, kids are left on their own to deal with their issues. Social cinema is important because it can teach youngsters, but not only them, how to behave in specific situations, what to avoid and why, the risks and consequences of certain actions and decisions, how to return to normality, how to love life its values and oneself. During the School Contest the President of Regione Campania, Stefano Caldoro, will award the Bronze medal of the President of the Republic to Mrs. Matilda Raffa Cuomo for her extraordinary work as the Honorary President of Mentoring USA-Italia. She is active in the spreading of her one-to-one method to contrast and prevent scholastic dispersion and youth inadequacy. In the great book "The Person Who Changed My Life" she collected the testimonies of great personalities Andrea Boccelli, Bill Clinton, Hilary Clinton, John Turturro etc.) who tell their mentoring stories and how they contributed to their human and professional success.

The beginning of the 69th edition of the Mostra Internazionale del Cinema di Venezia is approaching (August 29th-September 8th) and it promises to be unique and totally different from previous showcases: there are only going to be 18 films in competition (about half of the films presented last year) addressing important issues such as the current economic crisis and fundamentalism.

Italian director and screenwriter Francesco Rosi will be awarded with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement on August 31 in combination with the presentation of the restored copy, the project was funded by Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation and Gucci, of his famous masterpiece Il Caso Mattei (The Mattei Case, 1972).

Francesco Rosi is considered a symbol and innovator of socially-committed Italian filmmaking, the author of important and meaningful films such as Le mani sulla città (Hands over the City), winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival in 1963, Il caso Mattei (The Mattei Affair), Golden Palm at Cannes in 1972, and Salvatore Giuliano, Silver Bear in Berlin in 1961. 

The Director of the Venice Film Festival, Alberto Barbera, has stated: “In his long though not very prolific career, Rosi has left an indelible mark on the history of Italian filmmaking after World War II. His work has influenced generations of filmmakers around the world for its method, style, moral severity and the ability to bring urgent social issues onto the screen.

For this reason he has repeatedly been associated with post-war Neorealism and is considered the founding father of the activist film movement that was so important to our national production in the Sixties and Seventies.

In comparison with Neo-realism, which was so influential in his cultural education, Rosi’s cinema went much further in its deliberate intent to combine a keen proclivity for narrating real events, people and places with what Fellini defined as “the great crafting heritage of good American cinema”. Rosi's reply was: “I am honoured and very happy to receive this extremely prestigious acknowledgment, which has been awarded in the past to many great authors whom I love and admire.” 

Among the 18 films presented (the complete list can be found here. There are three Italian productions that are competing and that present a thorough portrait of today's Italy: Bella Addormentata by Marco Bellocchio, È stato il figlio by Daniele Ciprì and Un Giorno Speciale by Francesca Comencini. 

There is great anticipation for Bellocchio's latest, a film that has been surrounded by controversies even during pre-production. Inspired by the story of Eluana Englaro, a young woman who spent 17 years in a persistent vegetative state due to a horrific car accident, the film addresses the topic of euthanasia.
 

In reality, after a long public and legal battle, Eluana's father and legal guardian was allowed to stop his daughter from being kept alive yet in Bellocchio's film “The stories and characters are all fictitious,” the director stated, “and Eluana's story is just in the background. The film addresses the issue of life and death and each story portrays it in a completely different way.” 

“I, as well as thousands of Italians,” Bellocchio continued, “was emotionally involved in Eluana's case and I in the film I present my atheist view.” Beppino Englaro, Eluana's father, who has been recently interviewed by the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano has not seen the film (that will open nationwide in Italy on September 7th) but he said that “after meeting with Marco Bellocchio, I understood how he was going to approach the subject of boundaries: the boundaries between life and death and how medicine influences them.” 

The cast includes actors Maya Sansa, Piergiorgio Bellocchio, Toni Servillo, Isabelle Huppert, Alba Rohrwacher, Michele Riondino, Brenno Placido, Gianmarco Tognazzi and Fabrizio Falco while  Daniele Ciprì is the director of photography. Coincidentally Ciprì is also the director of another film that's presented in Venice,  È stato il figlio, a film, according to the director, about the “misery of wealth.”

Based on the novel by Robert Alajmo the film “portrays reality tragically although it makes you laugh a lot,” the director stated. “It presents the grotesque of real tragedy especially in the final chapter of the film, which I cannot reveal of course, that is a real punch in the stomach. Although the novel is set in the 1970's my story does not fit in a definite era, it fits at any time and it does not end well... I never finish my stories with an 'happily ever after'.”

What we do know about the film is that the film is the story of a family of six, the Ciraulos, who lives in ignorance and poverty and spends the money received by the State after the death of a family member to buy a brand new Mercedes. “It is a mirror of today's society where people are driven by the wish of wealth and to be on television, a tragic death becomes the macabre opportunity to change one's social status” the director further explained.

The cast features Toni Servillo, Giselda Volodi, Aurora Quattrocchi, Benedetto Raneli and Fabrizio Falco. 

The third film in competition is Francesca's Comenicini Un Giorno Speciale, a low cost comedy that “want to give hope to the young generations” by telling the story of young Romans who, with ambition and determination, must face life and its values. 

The special day mentioned in the title is the first day at work for Gina (Giulia Valentini) and Marco (Filippo Schicchitano):  she is scheduled to meet with an important politician who has promised to help her get in the entertainment industry and he is the chaffeur who will drive her to her meeting. They do not know each other but they will spend the whole day together. 

Among the compromises Gina has to deal with, she has to provide specific sexual favors. “She is a girl like many others,” Comenicini explains “who believe that beauty and a careless freedom will take her where she believes she has to get to. They are open to anything just to make it!” But this type of compromises take you nowhere.

“With my film I want to tell today's guys and girls that life has a value and it is possible to find it, even through suffering and pain.” 

A special screening, out of competition, of La Nave Dolce (The Human Cargo) by Daniele Vicari will also take place. The film tells a story of immigration from 1991, when 15.000  immigrants from Albania arrived in Italy aboard the mercantile Vlora, but where immediately sent back. 

The aim of the Festival is to raise awareness and promote all the various aspects of international cinema in all its forms: as art, entertainment and as an industry, in a spirit of freedom and tolerance.  

All American news outlets reporting on his death call him a special effects master yet there are many more ways to describe him. Some have simply written “Father of E.T. Dies.”
 

“Carlo Rambaldi was E.T.’s Geppetto,” said Spielberg, referring to the fictional character who created Pinocchio while Italian director Pupi Avati described him as “a child who loved to play and make his toys. A child who dreams of making a theme park of all his characters.”
 

 Rambaldi, who died at age 86 in his native Italy, was first and foremost an artist and a sculptor. He was born on September 15, 1925 in Vigarano Mainarda, near Ferrara. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna where he developed his passion for electromechanics and the anatomy of the human skeleton and musculature. He took his first steps in the world of cinema with a huge dragon created for the film Sigfrido, directed by Giacomo Gentilomo. Never giving up on his dreams of becoming an artist he started working in cinema with renowned Italian directors including Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Marco Ferreri, Mario Monicelli and Dario Argento (with whom he collaborated on the film Profondo Rosso).

In 1971 he had to prove that his special effects were indeed effects and not not real actions in dog mutilation scenes in the film A Lizard in Woman's Skin. They were so realistic that the film's director, Lucio Fulci, was prosecuted for animal cruelty.

His mastery attracted the attention of Hollywood producer Dino De Laurentiis who brought him to the States to work on John Guillermin’s King Kong in 1976. “In addition to creating masks and other effects Rambaldi’s primary responsibility was to construct a life-size, fully functional mechanical Kong, but his final effort was replaced by a cheaper gorilla suit designed by fellow effects expert Rick Baker. The mechanical Kong can only be glimpsed briefly in the finished film. Rambaldi also designed the two giant ape arms used to hold actress Jessica Lange.”
 

It was in Hollywood that he developed his skills in mechatronics - a discipline that combines mechanical, electronic and system design engineering to produce special effects, yet he publicly disdained computerized effects.
 

The Washington Post reports him saying for an interview for La Repubblica “Digital costs around eight times as much as mechatronics. E.T. cost a million dollars and we created it in three months. There are 120 shots. If we wanted to do the same thing with computers, it would take at least 200 people a minimum of five months.”
 

Ansa reports him saying that with the advent of computer graphics and special effects “the magic is gone, just like when a magician shares his tricks with his audience. Now that anybody can create effects with their home computer something is missing.”
 

In 1977 he created the spindly extraterrestrials for Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and two years after that he worked on the xenomorph head effects for Ridley Scott’s Alien.In 1982 he re-teamed with Spielberg for E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. The good-hearted alien became one of the finest effects of his career and most likely his most loved creation. E. T.'s 30year anniversary was celebrated this past June 11th.

He often said that “E.T.'s eyes are those of a cat, as it features the same expression lines of an Himalayan cat.” Reportedly Spielberg always denied that and said instead that E.T. is a mix of Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway and Carl Sandburg. Rambaldi spent several months building the sweet alien with the extended neck and the glowing fingertip. He is reported saying “I finished E.T. exactly two days before we started shooting. You can imagine my responsibility in case it didn’t work very well.” But it worked perfectly and the small alien captured the hearts of children and adults alike. E.T. brought him his third Oscar for visual effects, preceded by his work on “Alien” in 1979, and John Guillermin’s “King Kong” in 1976.
 

Other films he worked on in various effects capacities included Nightwing, Possession, The Hand, David Lynch’s adaptation of the classic sci-fi novel Dune, Conan the Destroyer, the Stephen King-based features Cat’s Eye and Silver Bullet, and King Kong Lives.
 

“All of us who marveled and wondered at his craft and artistry are deeply saddened by the news of his passing,” Spielberg declared to the Associated Press. But it is not just Hollywood that is going to miss him. Facebook, for example, is filled with remembrance quotes, thoughts from artists of all kinds who were inspired by his craft and his ability to make a gentle animatronic alien seem so hyper-realistic in its features and emotional response that it could make everybody cry, even thirty years later.

“The quality that gives pleasure to the mind or senses and is associated with such properties as harmony of form or color, excellence of artistry, truthfulness, and originality,” this is the definition of beauty per The Free Online Dictionary, while the Merriam-Webster calls it “the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit.”

Both definitions focus on the roles of the mind and of the senses, but what about the body itself and the way it moves? That definitely contributes to the general picture. “I think the way we move is incredibly important and that is often ignored,” Flavia Bruni, an Italian dancer and pilates instructor in New York affirms. And what about Italian beauty? “Italian beauty is defined by pure joie de vivre and enjoyment of our own senses. Living life with a respect for them all opens up our bodies and this makes Italians so very attractive.”

A native of Bologna, Flavia has become a resident of New York just 8 years ago and in March 2012, she was voted by New York Magazine, the best in her field in the Best of New York issue. The blurb goes: “It’s all Pilates instructors’ duty to leave you with burning thighs and aching abs. Flavia Bruni, however, goes beyond that call, empowering her clients with a new je ne sais quoi in the way they carry themselves (from $105 for a private session) and employing mat work and the Reformer. The Italy native and professional dancer, who recently began teaching at new Soho wellness center Ethos Collective, teaches muscle memory and focuses on the moves that prompt her mostly female clientele to walk with an upright, attractive posture, which is as effective at taming back pain as it is for scoring a date.”

“My classes are a synthesis of movements taken from pilates with the addition of what I call Tools for Grace, secrets taken from the past that teach us to move in a more elegant and graceful way,” Flavia explains,  “As a result, beauty is not just a well defined body but a specific posture and way to move, which is totally Italian. Italian because I teach posture through the senses and the joy in employing them. I come from Bologna a city where in every corner you can smell something mouthwatering, hear melodic music or see breathtaking art. My senses were and are always on the alert. Our senses respond to all this beauty and open us up, they help the natural beauty of our body to come to the surface and carry us with innate elegance.”

The women of the fifties and sixties are, according to Flavia, the embodiment of this natural beauty. Sophia Loren being the icon par excellence. Now, at 78, she is still seen as an ageless beauty and an inspiration to women of all ages.

“Asked to share her secrets, Sophia Loren attributed her natural beauty to “a love of life, spaghetti, and the odd bath in virgin olive oil.” The practice of bathing in olive oil dates back to her Roman ancestors,” one of the old secrets that Flavia calls Tools for Grace. Sophia Loren is not her only muse: her grandmother is too. “She was real, she was open to life and all its senses. She taught me how to be a real woman,” Flavia said.

“I teach people to be natural and that automatically is gracious. The body must be used the way it was designed. When we move in harmony with our structure we as women, are comfortable in our own skin.” This concept of beauty is studied in Flavia's Be Beautiful Pilates classes, sessions where movement exercises are paired with discussion and the revelation of ancient secrets, knowledge that is out there, it has been for ages, but that we often disregard. 

“I must admit that yes, people come to me just because I am Italian,” Flavia adds, “They have been to Italy and they are not numb to the natural charm of Italian women. They want that too and I am here to teach them.”

Some think that a woman's wedding day is one of the most important days of her life, and because of that Flavia has designed a program called Fit and Fabulous for the bride-to-be who wants to look gorgeous and glide effortlessly down the aisle. “My promise is that on her wedding day the bride will illuminate the room walking down the aisle with grace and poise and she will be glowing with health.”