FESTIVAL CINEMAMBIENTE
11th Edition

Turin, 16 – 21 October 2008

115 film from 21 countries on the environment, human beings in their relationship with nature, with their fellow humans,

the objects we make and what we grow.

In October Turin will once again hold the most important environmental film festival in Italy with the 11th edition of Festival CinemAmbiente. The audience will have the opportunity learn about the health conditions of humanity and our planet through images, films, sounds, conferences, exhibitions, workshops and discussion panels which will help us imagine together a new eco-sustainable model for living.

Alarms reach us every day now to urge governments and citizens to admit the urgency of environmental problems and the need for economic and sustainable strategies that respect our planet.

The problems of our era, global warming, overpopulation, the lack of energy resources, socioeconomic instability and uncertainty, as well as the unrestrained development of new economic powers are complex and controversial issues. It has therefore become urgent to provide occasions for discussing and investigating the situation we are faced with.

In the past few years helpful contributions have been made by various sectors of art and culture in the endeavor to create strategies for protecting the environment. Cinema has been fighting on the frontline with remarkable activism in this “battle”. Documentary film is the preferred instrument for disseminating knowledge about the environment and raising our environmentalist consciousness.

The goal of Festival CinemAmbiente is to give a voice to the many pleas for defense of the environment and possible solutions for sustainable development.

The International Competition presents 10 films of which 7 are national premieres. These 10 films were selected from the hundreds of films submitted and they reveal a new way of presenting environmental issues to the public. This decision was supported by CinemAmbiente because it does not limit itself to criticism and alarmism but proposes new practices and behaviours for ethical living. For example In Garbage, The revolutions starts at home, American filmmaker Andrew Nisker convinced the family of two friends to be part of his environmental film experiment: The mother, father and three children accept the challenge to keep all the waste they produce in their garage for three months. This documentary is thought provoking in a fun but profound way because it reminds us of how important it is to recycle but, more important, to reduce waste production. The Chairman of the panel of juries in the international competition, assigned to Leo Hickman, will bring even more attention to the concept of good practices and what we can do in our daily lives and with our families. In fact Hickman is also in Turin to present his book Final Call in the CinemAmbiente series of literary aperitifs. He is a leading figure in international environmentalism and his articles in the Guardian (translated in Italy by Internazionale) suggest a new and doable approach to living and consumption habits, as long as you are willing to sacrifice. For one whole year this hard-line English journalist verified the possibility of living without ever violating strict ethical-ecological principles: he created a worm farm in his garden to autonomously recycle organic waste. He uses only products that respect environment and used washable diapers for his daughter. He even spent his summer vacation in Italy without ever using an airplane or a car!

Once again the international competition will include important moments of reflection on current issues: The Nuclear Comeback shows a tour of the major nuclear plants in the world. Nuclear power, seen by some people as the only true alternative to oil and the solution for global warming, continues to be extremely risky and costly. But the issue is dividing the scientific community, public opinion and even environmentalists themselves. The Bulgarian film Corridor#8 tells about the ups and downs of a European project created to build a large motorway from the Black Sea to Adriatic Sea through Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania. The Beast Within is an incredible document about a phenomenon that is widespread throughout the world but not much is known about it: organized fights using animals. Filmmaker Scagliola undertakes a journey from Mexico to China, the USA and Indonesia to create a film with marvellous photography that investigates the instinct for violence in humans. Africa is at the centre of international attention: films like Taking Root: the Vision of Wangari Maathai tell the story of the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to develop Kenya. The End of the Rainbow witnesses the impact of the new gold mining technology used in Guinea. These films portray a continent that is radically changing.

The Italian Documentary Competition confirms the interest and capability of Italian filmmakers to tackle environmental issues. There will be 12 films in the competition including those of 3 great filmmakers: Silvio Soldini, Daniele Segre and Guido Chiesa.

The Animated Film Competition sees the participation of 11 films from 11 countries. And animated film attentive to environmental themes is present transversely in all the Festival sections.

An abundance of powerful issues are dealt with in the rest of the rich program of the Festival, including Ecodesign in the year when Turin is the World Capital of Design. One of its main themes is sustainable architecture with films like Ecopolis and Greensburg which are present at this festival thanks to Discovery Italia, the new satellite channel that premiered precisely at CinemAmbiente. Then attention is also given to the International Polar Year of 2008 by calling for a testimony from the Inuit, the population of North American Indians who, more than any other, upholds the value of our planet’s ice-covered lands.

Among the issues proposed by the 2008 edition is water; this resource is increasingly rare and precious. Today there are approximately 1,400,000,000 people in the world without access to drinking water, over 2 billion have no indoor plumbing and one out of three people are unable to sanitize their used water. The Festival has decided to concentrate on these alarming statistics as part of its work. Among others is the film One Water, in the international competition, which uses splendid images to present the hotly debated relationship between humans and this indispensable resource. Because of its quality and importance, this year we will once again present Ambiente e Lavoro, this year being organized in collaboration with Inail. It includes long and short films that explore the multifaceted and contradictory relationship of humans with their occupations and the problems of personal as well as environmental safety. Another section which has become a tradition is Focus sui Diritti Umani, organized by our Festival in collaboration with Amnesty International. In this edition it will concentrate on Tibet and its struggle for survival as well as the drama of children soldiers in Darfur.

www.cinemambiente.it

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