Salina Film Festival: An Aeolian Treasure

SalinaDocFest

The Aeolian Island of Salina, close to Sicily, is the setting for an intriguing event: SalinaDocFest, Immagini, Suoni e Realta’ del Mediterraneo (Images, Dreams and Realty of the Mediterranean). Now in its fourth year, SalinaDocFest presents the best in narrative documentary filmmaking on the beautiful island of Salina.

The Festival’s theme in 2010 is Il Mio Paese: L’identita’ (My Country: The Identity), the concept of identity in all its forms: male and female, private and public, individual and political. The Festival will begin with an international contest of narrative documentaries whose subjects are connected to the countries and people of the Mediterranean Sea and contemporary social issues.

The entire island joins in the Festival, with different small towns hosting various events. Click here for an interactive map of Salina, complete with photos of the towns and locations of hotels and B&Bs.

Click here for a description of the accommodations, contact information and websites. More information can be found at SalinaIsolaVerde.

SalinaDocFest runs from September 12-19, 2010. To learn more about the Festival, go to salinadocfest.org.


Giovanna Taviani

The Art Director and creative force behind the Festival is Giovanna Taviani, a talented documentary filmmaker in her own right. In 2004, her film I Nostri 30 Anni: Generazioni A Confronto, debuted at the Torino Film Festival. In 2006 her second documentary, Ritorni, appeared at the Rome Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize at the Potenza Film Festival.

A student of cinema and literature, she has written various works on the subject published by the University of Calabria and G.B. Palumbo Editore. Since 1997 she has been the editor of Allegoria magazine and a contributor to Cinecritica and Eidos.


Though born in Rome, Giovanna describes herself as a “Sicilian by heart”. The island of Salina has long been one of her favorite destinations. Like so many places, Salina’s economy is tied with tourism, which surges during the summer months and drops off drastically in the fall. “This is a shame, because September and continuing into the fall are so beautiful on the island. It’s our harvest season and shouldn’t be missed.” This sentiment was echoed by her long time friend, Alberto Oliviero, who is the President of SalinaIsolaVerde, a tourism association focusing on the cultural and natural beauty of the island. Oliviero encouraged Giovanna to create a cultural event that would bring tourists to the island on the off-season. And so SalinaDocFest was born.

I had the pleasure of meeting Giovanna Taviani recently while she was in the US. She is intelligent and warm with a distinct point of view. For those who may not know, Giovanna Taviani is the daughter and niece of the enormously successful Italian directors and screenwriters, Paolo & Vittorio Taviani, known among their devoted fans as I Fratelli Taviani (The Taviani Brothers). Their narrative films tell stories wrapped in fable-like elements where the laws of Nature don’t always apply.

Giovanna, in contrast, is building her career with documentaries, specifically, narrative documentaries. This type of film blends both genres; real people, not actors, tell a true story while archival footage, reminiscence and perhaps clips of past films are added to bring depth to the story. When I asked her why she chose this type of filmmaking she explained, “The more personal reason is that I needed to create my own distinct style, and not just copy that of the Taviani Brothers. I had to find my own space within the world of filmmaking. But at the same time, I am my father’s daughter and I love to tell stories. So by blending the realistic style of documentaries with story-telling elements of narrative films, I present stories with my personal point of view, my own voice.

The other reason is I believe that as human beings, we really need return to reality. We are saturated with false stories and what we call Reality TV is not reality at all. It is a world of controlled images and events pretending to be reality. Real stories are not being told. With documentaries, we can get inside what is really happening.” Like the American film The Truman Show, Giovanna says we are living in a constructed environment and we don’t even know it. She believes in the power of the narrative documentary to break through our collective fantasy into reality.

Giovanna’s point of view is strong and clear and she doesn’t shrink from controversial topics. Her current focus is Italy’s immigration policies, which she finds regrettable and wrong-headed. She can’t help but marvel at the irony of the issue: the Italians who immigrated to America were looked down upon and had to struggle for every aspect of a decent life. And now Italy’s strict policies treat those from other countries with the same suspicion and marginalization. “When we harshly repel immigrants in the Mediterranean Sea, we forget both our past as emigrants and our present as a country of emigrants, where the young are forced to leave their land looking for a job and to escape from their dreadful and uneasy situation…Sicilians, as well as other Italians, were created from the blending together of ethnic groups from different countries. We cannot forget this.”

Cinematic Inspiration Comes Full Circle

Just as the Taviani Brothers influenced Giovanna’s love of film, Giovanna’s techniques and ideas have now inspired them. Because of her passion for the narrative documentary, the Taviani Brothers are making plans to film their first narrative documentary. Their chosen subject is an Italian prison where the inmates perform productions of Shakespeare. The Taviani Brothers give Giovanna full credit for their newfound fascination with the genre, but stopped short at allowing her to be involved in their filmmaking process. “I told them that I would love to help them with this project, but they said, ‘No, we’ll do it ourselves.’ So I have to wait and see what they will create.”

Peppe Butera, Sicilian Abstract Artist, Brings His ‘Cry of Love’ to the United States

This article also appears on our Italian Journal page.

In April 2009, painter Peppe Butera brought his latest exhibition, Urlo d’Amore (Cry of Love) to The Foundry Gallery in New York City and the Westchester Italian Cultural Center in Tuckahoe, New York. Long enamored with the drip painting style of Jackson Pollock and pop-art sensibility of Mimmo Rotella, Butera fuses these elements with the warmth and earthiness of his native Sicily.

Cry of Love may be as close to heartbreak on canvas as we’re likely to see. Butera painted these works from the agony of a great love’s end. It’s all there: confusion, desolation, isolation, the stubborn denial. And also the love that viscerally endures. To experience these works is to somehow take the journey with him, and leaves no doubt of the power of art to communicate beyond the reach of words.
Butera pours his colors onto the canvas using the drip painting technique. With both both acrylic and oil paint, he mixes them with elements found in Nature, like sand from a Sicilian beach. Even his colors evoke the palette of Sicily: the blues of the Mediterranean, the yellows and golds of the sun, reds of terra firma and black from the ashes of Mount Etna.

The passion of his work is best explained by Butera himself: “If I try to tell the reasons of my work, of my life, you won’t hear of much school, rather of the actors of my childhood, my grandfather, my parents, my country. There I was born. I, then, realized, step by step, another way of life, dominated by colors. I began to talk a new alphabet, mine were colored words…There are words coming from your head, these are regular, rational words. They follow time, space, rules. And there are words coming from your heart. They have no time, no space, no rules. They have only colors. They became my voice, my letters, my cry of love and I colored my paintings with them….I have been spending my life to paint for the woman I love. Love is the only reason of my life, the only one able to ‘move the stars’. If you feel something, looking at canvas, you know it depends only on my thought of love.”


I asked him if the act of painting these images calmed the pain in his heart. “A little bit.” he said.

Peppe Butera’s other exhibitions include:
Le Credit Lyonnais, San Tropez (1997)
Omaggio a Pollock, Spazio Cosi’, Vicenza (1998)
Percorsi, Hotel Concordia, Cortina (2002)
La Mia Valle Pirandello e Quasimodo, Museo Archeologico Regionale, Agrigento (2003)
Galleria Maytemuno2, Barcelona (2003)
Per Passione, Ex Ateneo Piazza Duomo, Bergamo (2004)
Cara Amica, Museo Archeologico di Agrigento (2005)