Tiziana Finzi was in charge of making a choice selection for the Nobarcode. Having worked for over 20 years at various film festivals and their programmes, she was an ideal candidate for the job. Former director of Miami International Film Festival, Finzi served as head of programming for the acclaimed Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland for the past nine years and deputy director since 2005. Renowned film festivals in Venice, Trieste, Pesaro and Taormina are also part of Finzi’s career. Her success was also notable in the field of visual arts, having worked as a curator for several international film festivals. She is the one responsible for connecting Locarno FF with renowned museums and galleries across the globe.
The very same engagement with visual arts affected her choices for the Nobarcode selection. Each film has its own unique visual imprint, some even transcending into other forms of art expression. This concept is most apparent in the fascinating video installations by the renowned artistic duo from Italy, Masbedo, four of which will be screened within this selection (Ash, Person, Glima and Theorem of incompleteness). Masbedo are famous for their symbolic visual creations which explore the contemporary crisis of values.
One of the most provocative films of 2010, “Exit Through the Gift Shop”, is a story of street art which stands witness to events stemming from the clash of fame, money and vandalism. The film was directed by the renowned graffiti author Banksy who’s been successfully maintaining his anonymity for years now. The film follows an eccentric French merchant who tries to find and record Banksy, who instead turns the camera towards the author himself creating spectacular results!
A controversial language of hip-hop will become clearer after “The Furious Force of Rhyme” by Joshua Atesh Litle. A fiery cross between art and politics, this film breaks all preconceptions and stereotypes and shows the way in which one music genre can become the means to overcome cultural differences. Having its world premiere at the prestigious Locarno festival in 2010, it remained at world festivals ever since.
In Japan, over 4 million young people are victims of new working conditions, stemming from global financial crisis. Many of them can’t even cover their rent expenses, thus becoming so called net-refugees. Find out more about this new working class in Marc Petitjean’s “Tokyo Freeters”.
Nicolas Pereda’s multiple winner “Summer of Goliath” is an elegant picture of those marginalized by the Mexican society. Winner of Orrizonti award at the 67th Venice Film Festival is part comedy, part crime story where nothing is what it seems.
American director Clay Jeter will introduce us with a truly unique film experience with his debut film “Jess+Moss”. This film eludes traditional narrative tools and in a most peculiar way conveys memories, yearnings and the potency of everyday life.
“k.364 A Journey by Train” was signed by the talented visual artist Douglas Gordon who uses the power of images and music to express the universal story about the tragedy of the Holocaust. The films is, in fact, a portray of a musical piece which uses visual arts as its background while following two Polish musicians of Jewish origin who return to the country their parents abandoned in 1939.
“The Four Times” is only Michelangelo Frammartino’s second film, but it confirms his status of an artist who seeks extraordinary within ordinary and eternal within ephemeral. In an atmosphere filled with humour, film follows the journey of a single soul through its four consecutive lives.
An exciting documentary “Roberto Saviano: In the Shadow of Death” by Elisa Mantin sheds light into Saviano’s everyday life and struggles. Saviano is a young journalist involved in a war against the so called “new mafia” – Camorra. In 2006 he published “Gomorrah”, a comprehensive insight into Camorra’s business dealings. The book became a bestseller but also led to numerous death threats which forced him to leave Italy.
