"Walls, are not only useless but also dangerous."
Sparta 440 BC

Associazione Culturale Researching Movie
presents

IV Portello River Festival - 4th edition
Ethnicity and Diasporas

International Film Festival

Introduction
Like in the past years the IV° edition of the Portello River Festival is going to have his main scene on a raft on the river, which has always been a metaphor of travel and adventure.

The river, ancient means for economic and cultural exchanges, represents the movement, the running of time and above all freedom. The denied freedom is the topic of the retrospective of this edition: “The Wall” is more than a simple metaphor. It symbolizes the physical oppression of whole populations along the history of humanity.

The shame and the sorrow of the whole world lean on a wall of crying. It’s a virtual wall, which is made of many walls: walls of indifference, predomination and segregation that surround the world and hang on to excuses of safety, no belligerence, forced peace… The wall par excellence was in Berlin and fell in ’89, but the scandal and the polemics that are growing around the building of the Israeli wall, that squeezes the palestinian areas with hypocrisy and ostracism, show how the public opinion is constantly raped by contradictory boundary barriers.

History is made of walls: starting form the aurelian wall during the roman empire, continuing with the “mother” of all walls, the Great Wall of China, the israeli-palestinian wall, arriving to the wall of Berlin, symbol of political and social division. Without forgetting the “wall” between Mexico and Usa, the last european one in Ciprus and the last italian one, Gorizia.

The migratory flows connected to globalization put societies, individuals and organizations head-on with a new challenge: to build step by step a multicultural society that does not give space to differences, that does not divide but put together, knocking down those phisycal and cultural walls that impede the sharing of different values and lifestyles. Which are the intrusions of these aberrant realities in the cinematic imaginary? With fiction and documentaries the stories knock down the walls to let us meet who is not free and their feelings, that fly free.

Following this ideas the Portello River Festival wants to give even a more international nature, with the partecipation in the key staff of Ivan Gergolet (Slovenia) and Anna Stereopulo (Greece). They are going to invite to participate representatives of the cinematography of their country of origin, as well as other european developing countries like Slovenia, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, Romania, Poland.

Six european countries to which we have to add Italy, Spain, United Kingdom and Switzerland, to obtain a kermesse of international nature, rich in different stories.

In such a wide range of cultural experiences you just have to let you drag by the flow of the river and of the feelings that with their power can knock down every wall.

46 films in program, 11 documentaries, 27 fictions, 8 animations, 9 European nations: the walls have been knocked down.

Date
This year the Festival will run from the 20th of June to the 20th of July.

Film Festival Competition
Like last year, the final week of the Portello River Festival will be a week of competition between films not only from Europe, but also from other continents.
The selection criteria are designed to encourage new emergent filmmakers.
The main theme, which has to be present in every film, is ethnicity and diaspora, not only in terms of the politics or violence of a situation.
The soundtrack written for the film and its relation to the images is specifically considered in the films selected because it often highlights cultural aspects and view.
Like last year, too, there are four categories, in each of which the winner will receive an award.

The four categories are:

Best documentary

Best soundtrack (composer)

Best short

Best animation

With such a broad cultural input and so many diverse views, and points of view, how can one not be drawn by the flow of emotions into the river that growing in size and strength can knock down any wall.

Emilio Della Chiesa
Direttore artistico