Italian Sri Lankan Film Festival

The Italian Sri Lanka Film Festival making it the first of its kind will be held from October 19 to the 21 at Cine City Maradana.

This event will put together long movies which won international awards, and short movies by young and emergent talents both Italian and Sri Lankan. The workshops and festival will give the opportunity to young Sri Lankan film-makers to interact with international figures of the movie industry like Director Paola Randi and curator of short movies festivals Stefano Martina.

Out of the 70 short movies received they have selected a limited number of them for a competition where the best three will receive an award in cash.

This event is dedicated to the theme of migration, which is extremely relevant in this Country, and it shows different aspects of the Sri Lankan migration to Italy (the hardship of illegal journeys, but also the level of integration).

The event is organized by the Embassy of Italy, under the coordination of Boodee Keerthisena and support of Colombo Courtyard, Srilankan Airlines, Cine City, National Film Corporation, Derana TV, Elephant and the Mouse.

The movies to be featured:

Blow-Up (1966) is writer/director Michelangelo Antonioni’s view of the world of modern fashion and an engaging, provocative murder mystery that examines the existential nature of reality interpreted through photography (also painting and pantomime). It was set in mid-60s London, well known at the time for its trends including the Beatles, stick-thin fashion model Twiggy, and the mod styles at Carnaby Street.

This was Antonioni’s first film in English, and it quickly became one of the most important films of its decade making it his first international box-office success. It was also a milestone in liberalized attitudes toward film nudity and expressions of sexuality.

The film was nominated for two Academy Awards (with no wins): Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay (Michelangelo Antonioni and Tonino Guerra, and Edward Bond), and it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1967.

Mille Soya: The story revolves around a group of young musicians - rock ‘n rollers who venerate Bob Marley and wish to become a famous band. But their lives on the lowest rungs of Sri Lankan society, with its poverty and violence offer them little if no opportunities. Friends returning from Italy talk about the money to be made. But the journey there is not straightforward because it’s not legal.

The film follows them on their dangerous journey with all its hazards, its comradeship, its tears and laughter and also death. When in Naples, Italy, the appalling conditions of their day-to-day living, the hard labor, but also the basic human frailties, strengths, loves and hates, are also shown. On returning to Sri Lanka, somehow they seem to be better equipped to survive either in Sri Lanka, or to return to Italy, this time as legal immigrants.

Into Paradiso: Alfonso is a scientist from Naples. A shy and clumsy man, he has just lost his job. Gayan is a fascinating former Sri Lankan cricket champion who has just arrived in Naples penniless and thinks he’s found paradise. Alfonso has spent all his life studying the migration of cells and watching soap operas with his mum. Gayan has travelled, has known fame, glory and money. What brings these two men together? How can such different people possibly have nothing in common yet become inextricably bound together? In multi-ethnic Naples, the destinies of Alfonso and Gayan become entangled, and they find themselves sharing a shack put up illegally on the roof of a building in the heart of the city’s Sri Lankan district.

Through a tragi-comic misunderstanding, Alfonso has to hide from a gang of criminals, and Gayan first becomes a hostage then his only friend and ally. This paradoxical situation gives birth to a special sort of friendship between the two, a bond that will give them the courage to face their individual destinies, changing them for ever. This movie won the Platinum Award as Best Film at the 45th edition of the Houston International Film Festival in 2012.