Cinematic

BEST IN SHORTS 2022 – Contemporary Italian Animation 

curator Pierpaolo Loffreda

BEST IN SHORTS has now reached its 8th edition at the Pesaro Film Festival. The non-competitive section, the result of a rigorous selection, is dedicated to inventive, moving works made by Italian animation film-makers over the past few months: “Contemporary Italian Animation”, literally.
There is a substantial number of BEST IN SHORTS this year (including very short ones). Therefore, the customary one-hour duration has been exceeded, and the programme runs for an overall 70 minutes. We still had to restrain ourselves, because there was a very wide, and high-quality, offer.
Many works are signed by young and very young film-makers, very capable beginners, who are being trained in animation film at Schools, Institutes, and Fine Arts Academies. The selection also includes the latest, qualified productions of some well-known film-makers - whose award-winning work has already circulated abroad – with whom the Festival has a special connection. 
In this regard, we are happy to welcome the brilliant and unpredictable artist Donato Sansone, a friend of the festival to whom was dedicated a complete retrospective and a meeting in 2020. this year, we present seven films of his, all made over the recent months. The same goes for Beatrice Pucci, whom we have been following – and whose works we propose – since she was still a high school student (at the Scuola del Libro in Urbino), 21 years ago; the 2018 edition equally included a personal retrospective and a meeting dedicated to this young artist. Nico Bonomolo – winner of a David di Donatello this year – is also a welcome return: some of his previous films were shown in past editions.
All the creators selected work like artisans, for many months, even years, in order to express themselves and present films of great imagination and originality, usually at festivals. These works are extremely diverse in terms of language, style, and techniques, which include hand drawing, and stop motion. We believe all of them give the idea of the level of vitality, creativity, innovation, and research that many film-makers in our country are able to express in spite of the lack of means and the scant attention received by the Italian establishment. In fact, the latter is particularly tight-fisted as regards the circulation of original works including in the audio-visual field (why doesn’t at least one of the public digital terrestrial television stations broadcast art-house animation shorts?) We would like to be able to contribute to the circulation of our film-makers’ works as we did in the past. We wish we could start working together in this direction, so that audiences see extraordinary works that otherwise risk falling into oblivion.

BEST IN SHORTS – Contemporary Italian Animation was made possible this year thanks to the fundamental partnerships with the Academy of Fine Arts of Urbino, the Istituto Superiore per le Industrie Artistiche of Urbino (with the animation courses conducted by Mara Cerri and Magda Guidi), Fuorinorma Festival, the Ravenna Academy of Fine Arts, and the Associazione Libera Marchigiana Animatori.

BEST IN SHORTS 2022 will screen the following:

Greater than Eight – Strange Home di Giulia Marcolini, 2021, 3’59”
Per una carezza di Andrea Bonetti, 2021, 13’40”
Fumo di Giacomo Incannella, 2021, 0’36”
Omo Valley Tribes di Isabella Bignardi, 2021, 1’44”
MYOPIA di Serenella Vezzi, 2021, 1’28”
Isolamento di Alice Bonora, 2021, 2’22”
Encyclopedia di Giulia Casali, 2021, 2’13”
La terra delle rose altee di Cecilia Cairo, 2021, 2’04”
Aldo di Sara Priorelli, Maria Zilli, 2021, 1’54”
Interviste dalla fine del mondo di Adina Enache, Oscar Renni, 2021, 1’28”
Il canto del pensiero errante di Silvia De Gennaro, 2020, 2’51”
Cinematic di Donato Sansone, 2021, 0’59”
Anything Will Happen di Donato Sansone, 2021, 0’26”
La manigua di Donato Sansone, 2021, 0’47”
Creativity 30 di Donato Sansone, 2021, 0’33”
C’mon Tigre di Donato Sansone, 2022, 3’28”
Solace in Structure di Donato Sansone, 2022, 3’15”
Fantasma di Donato Sansone, 2022, 1’
Maestrale di Nico Bonomolo, 2021, 10’21”
Zaguate di Elisa Turrin, 2021, 3’10”
Work di Claudia Bumbica, 2022, 1’05”
Insid(i)e di Daniela Valentini, 2022, 0’45”
Unoallavolta di Irene Profeta, 2022, 1’34”
Rosso e giallo di Aziz Sydygaliev, 2021, 0’34”
Hypoxia di Chiara Cicchetti, 2021, 0’40”
Agorafobia di Francesca Fantoni, 2001, 0’43”
Dove il sasso cadrà di Beatrice Pucci, 2022, 4’47”
Mother di Benedetta Sani, 2021, 1’13”