catalogo - Cinemambiente

CinemAmbiente once again arrives in time to
coincide with World Environment Day on 5
June, a global manifestation that promotes environmental
initiatives. The Festival program is
both vast and varied. This year’s jury president
is famed Michael Cimino who will talk with Alberto
Barbera about Sunchaser (1996).
The Festival presents one hundred films selected
from the nearly thousand registrations
received, a sign of green cinema’s vitality and
growth as a distinct film genre. Two featured
titles are South American: Lucy Walker’s Waste
Land, that competed for Oscar Award, about
artist Vik Muniz, filmed on location in a Brazilian
dump site; and Icíar Bollaín’s Even the Rain
about water privatization in Bolivia, with Gael
Garcia Bernal in the leading role. Also featured
are national premiers: Solartaxi - Around the
World with the Sun, the journey of a young
Swiss in a solar-powered car; Valentin Thurn’s
Taste the Waste about food waste, with scenes
of a dinner prepared from food leftovers for
1000 persons and held in Turin in 2010; the
world premiere of Niccolò Bruna and Andrea
Prandstraller’s Polvere - Il grande processo
dell’amianto, which reveals new developments
in the Eternit-asbestos controversy.
Closer to home are Gastinelli and Pellegrino’s A
la vita! in cuneese dialect with subtitles in Italian
and Guido Morandini’s La verifica instabile
about a journey down the Po from Turin to Venice
in an inflatable canoe and a folding bicycle.
This being International Year of Forests, six films
INTRODUZIONE - INTRODUCTION | 5
on forests will be shown, including the Italian
premier of Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s Of Forests
and Men, narrated by Paola Maugeri, who will
be a jury member together with Michael Cimino
and Mario Tozzi. Tozzi will present the Ital@
ambiente project created using citizen’s video
content from the Web.
CinemAmbiente will also be a catalyst for other
green events such as the second Bike Pride and
the first FierAmbiente, a market of environmentally
sustainable products.
In his novel, The Day of the Bomb, Austrian
children’s book writer Karl Bruckner recounts
the story of Sadako who survived the bombing
of Hiroshima. During the final months of her
life, she attempted to create 1000 paper origami
cranes in belief of the legend that promises
that the creator’s wish will be fulfilled on completion
of the cranes. In memory of the victims
of the recent disasters in Japan, CinemAmbiente
posters will display origami cranes, a symbol
of long life and prompt healing. We therefore
launch an appeal to make cranes in the hope
that Japan will overcome this crisis and that
Fukushima will not become another Chernobyl.