I would like to thank everyone who took part of this project, in one way or the other!
To do so let me just paste here the credit roll, and add a special thank to Ellen McRae, who edited the subs of this trailer!
from an idea of
Monica Mazzitelli e Emanuela Bonavolta
with
Adelia, Anarita, Claudia, Imaculada, Joana, Liliana, Lucia, Marcia, Marta, Nela, Paciencia, Regina, Rosa, Rosalina, Serita e Teresa
I am finally ready my new film work, this time a documentary. I shot it in Mozambique, a few months ago, on the stimulus received by a precious woman, Emanuela Bonavolta, coordinator of a non-profit organization called “O Viveiro” (“the nursery”, in Portuguese), which manages a center for young girls in the poor and unhealthy town of Chitima, in Mozambique.
The girls that stay there build their lives one millimeter a day. Orphan or poor, or both, they get an opportunity to invest in themselves, get education, learn a profession, and re-educate themselves to the affection they have never received, and get a chance to set fractures of their past shattering experiences. Not all of them succeed.
“Dignity” tries to tell, without rhetoric, these girls’ stories; their epic, their poetry, their falls, their success. But above all their splendor.
In this film I tried to shoot images with a cinematic, artistic value, to try and give a feeling of the girls’ inner beauty, their power and strenght. Their ability to stubbornly grow from nothing, like flowers in the desert. I tried to narrate this mostly through their words, respecting their need to pass on their own stories, create their own myth-making.
This documentary is about the possibility of dignity for women, for all women, in Africa and elsewhere.
The premiere of this documentary is for this Friday, July 10 at 6.00 pm at the magnificent Casa del Cinema in Villa Borghese, as it was selected for the RAFF, RomAfrica Film Festival. It will be a very special moment for me. I hope that my story will be worth the girls. Because they deserve that, and everything else in their lives.
Come, if you like, the event is on Facebook here.
My shortfilm “Midsommar” is finally available online today, on the Swedish Midsummer’s Eve!
I am so happy to be able to screen it for all, at last!
With English titles:
Avec sous-titres français:
Con subtítulos en español:
Finally online on Youtube my new video, dedicated to the beautiful work of Maestro Max Fuschetto.
This Saturday, April 18th, at 4.30 pm, my shortfilm “Midsommar” will be screened at the magnificent “Nordic Film Festivall” in Rome. I am honored and delighted it will make this beautiful appearance right before I place it on Youtube. If you want to see it on a screen, this is your probable last opportunity
Concert at Casa del Jazz, Rome, Italy, January 18th, 2015
It’s a fact: jazz in the Nordic countries doesn’t like to take itself too seriously or to put on airs. The best Finnish pianist, and one of the best pianists in Europe overall, can kid around with the audience as if it were all a great game and at the same time express such virtuosity that he renders them speechless. Rantala’s first important solo tour in Italy was a great success, likely to be repeated. The tour ended in Rome, where he was welcomed with enthusiasm, even though he is not at all as well known here as he is in central and northern Europe, where he fills the auditoriums.
I am specially elated today because Andrea Chimenti‘s new CD is out, and I have had the huge honor of cooperating with him on this album but writing the lyrics to its only English song, A Sweet Fall“.
I have also shot the video to this song, which will be available soon.. In the meanwhile, if you are curious to listen, you are most welcome to do so at the link below, thank you!
Andrea Chimenti‘s new album YURI is finally due for tomorrow and I am delighted for many reasons, even personal, as I wrote the lyrics of the only English song contained, “A Sweet Fall”. But I am especially delighted about the beauty of this album, produced by Andrea’s son Francesco Chimenti, a devastating talent, with his equally skilled band mate Davide Andreoni, and recorded and mixed by amazing Stefano Amerigo Santoni, who all play in Italy’s most emerging post rock band, the Sycamore Age.
A visual artist that I love, Sara Zanoni, prepared the 10 teasers of this album, which you can see all together at the link below. Enjoy!
Phronesis is one of the few European new jazz bands about which music critics of any generation are in almost total agreement, as has been noted in most of the major rankings of 2014. And their most recent work, Life to Everything, is a further leap forward in the already consolidated production of this group, whose leader is the magnificent Danish bassist Jasper Højby, also the composer of all the tracks in the band’s first two albums, and of most of the previous one. In Life to Everything, however, the boys shared the composition equally, each one responsible for three pieces. Most certainly, the band’s secret lies in the exceptional musical and personal balance of an ensemble in which each element stands out on its own so much that it is never subordinate to another, in an eternal playful game of tag. It is quite incredible: they always rise to each other’s heights. Not that in other bands the leaders crush the others, but Phronesis deploys not only a great pianist, the British Ivo Neame, but also the best double bassist and the best drummer (the Norwegian-Swede Anton Eger) of their generation. Phronesis overwhelms with its pulsating and propulsive style, maintaining a rock band energy that viscerally touches the listener, especially when live. This is why their album was recorded live instead of in the studio: it bears that seal of emotional contagion. No coincidence that the title of the album is the ending of a Plato quote, which is displayed on the CD cover: "Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, […] and life to everything".
New jazz at the nth power, innovation, groove and a mixture of rhythms, often Latin as well, from flamenco to Afro-Cuban, passing through Brazil.
