#CinemaeAmbienteAvezzano

THE PROJECT

The Cinema e Ambiente Avezzano project was born in 2016 from the collaboration between director Paolo Santamaria and the managers of the Ambecò cooperative - Silvia Cardarelli, Rosalia Ciciotti, Rossella Frozza, Paola Morga and Chiccolò Oliva - engaged in environmental education processes for over twenty years. The aim of the Festival is to promote a critical reflection on issues related to waste, to change climate change and sustainable development, through the immediacy of cinematic language.

Combining art with environmental education means rethinking the way of involving society in the sustenance of the resources of the Planet, our first home. The artistic metaphor is understood as formidable tool to understand that the relationship between us and the Earth can be re-evaluated every single day. .

Cinema becomes the tool to foster a dialogue on integration, social inclusion and on reception, and culture, a mechanism for preventing and combating social hardship; the education environmental a means to contribute to the affirmation of the active, aware and responsible citizen both from a scientific-cultural point of view and from an ethical-legislative point of view. .

A film festival divided into several days in which a competition for short films alternates and one for feature films, with dozens of international films focusing on sustainability, with the aim of cultivating and increasing the awareness of the new generations on these issues.

the ambecò team

Silvia Cardarelli

Rossella Frozza

Paola Morga

Rosalia Ciciotti

Antonella “Chiccolò” Bambagini Oliva

the 2024 edition

We live in an age of extremes.

Unprecedented climate phenomena leave us helpless in the face of their fury. Social changes generated by the scarcity of resources, their hoarding and forced migrations, create profound injustices and fuel new conflicts. In this complex and fragmented reality, an urgent need arises: to bridge the gaps, to rediscover our humanity in the face of the challenges of a changing planet.

Cinema e Ambiente Avezzano 2024, in its ninth edition, is dedicated to the theme of "Extremes".

Films, documentaries and short films from all over the world will guide us on a journey through places near and far, telling stories of resistance, denunciation and hope. The voices of the filmmakers, present at the screenings, will join those of the public for a truly unique opportunity for cultural enrichment for our territory.

This year too, the Cinema e Ambiente Green Experience talk panel will be a moment to meet experts, scientific communicators and artists of national and international importance, each linked by a concrete commitment to sustainability and environmental protection; a discussion table where to stimulate a constructive and informed approach, coordinated by the scientific direction of Marirosa Iannelli and Marco Merola.

We invite you to join us, from 17 to 23 June 2024, in this extraordinary cinematographic and cultural adventure, to explore together the global dynamics that influence our present and to imagine innovative and shared solutions.

The Thirst is a call to action to address one of the most pressing challenges of our time: the sustainable management of water, our most precious asset.

During the Festival, we will have the opportunity to explore issues related to the protection of our ecosystem during the talk panel called Cinema e Ambiente Green Experience, accompanied by experts, scientists, activists and artists who will share their knowledge and their experiences, stimulating constructive debates and inspiring concrete actions.

Thanks to an international selection of short films, documentaries and animated films, we will explore the different facets of the environmental theme, traveling between the various continents through the magic of Cinema. From 12 to 18 June 2023 an engaging experience, full of creative stimuli and new perspectives on the world.

THE ART DIRECTOR

Paolo Santamaria

The Anthropocene will be the theme of the sixth edition of "Cinema and Environment Avezzano". The word, composed of the Greek terms "man" and "recent", was proposed to indicate the current geological age in which we live, where the natural environment is strongly influenced by the effects of anthropogenic activity. The Anthropocene is the indelible human footprint on the earth.

The intensive exploitation of planetary resources has led man to shape the planet by selfishly following only his needs, underestimating the consequences of his actions in the delicate balance of the planet. The very word Anthropocene becomes a metaphor for a humanity that feels it is the absolute protagonist of life on Earth and is not a harmonic part of the entire ecosystem. I like to think of the Pale Blue Dot, a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 probe, when it was six billion kilometers away, well beyond the orbit of Neptune. The idea of turning the probe's camera and taking a picture of the Earth from the edge of the solar system came from astronomer and science writer Carl Sagan. In his famous speech Sagan manages to celebrate and desecrate, with that clarity that only science can express: "There is perhaps no better demonstration of the madness of human vanities than this distant image of our tiny world, [...] the only home we've ever known ". This is a bit of the paradigm and compromise of the performing arts, to systematize and consecrate our vacuous madness, our infamous lack of symbiosis with the world around us. We are potentially wonderful and in practice sensitively contradictory. With the hope of being able to observe and experience the world with the care and delicacy that "a solitary grain in the great and enveloping cosmic darkness" deserves.