XI Rassegna - Nuoro 7/12 Ottobre 2002 [file.pdf] - Isre

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NOTE
Paolo Piquereddu
Direttore Generale dell’ISRE
The films presented on the following pages are divided into two
categories: those in competition and those in retrospective/out of
competition.With regards to the former there are 23 works that
the selection committee has chosen from a total of about 90 films
that arrived in time for inclusion in competition.
The composition of the selection committee has been largely renewed.
From 1990 to 2000, in fact, those included, apart from myself, were,
Asen Balikci, Antonio Marazzi and Colette Piault: on six occasions
these visual anthropologists, known the world over, have guaranteed
a punctual, impartial and zealous work of selection, as is testified by
the quality of the programmes presented on each occasion. For this
reason we regard them as “friends for life” of the Istituto.
I must also underline that the new committee certainly has all the
requisites to continue this tradition of seriousness, commitment and
competence in the work of selection.
Melissa Llewellyn-Davies, a visual anthropologist famous for her series
of films about the Masai women shot on the borders between Kenya
and Tanzania from 1974 to 1993. More recently she has worked for
television, making programmes that are innovative both in their
themes and style of production.
David MacDougall, considered to be a maestro of ethnographic
cinema, has made films in Africa, Asia, Australia, and in Sardinia,
where he arrived in 1993 to make, invited by the ISRE, Tempus de
Baristas for which he has received the most varied recognition. He is
the author of numerous publications on documentary and
ethnographic cinema and actually works in the role of Professorial
Fellow at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian
National University, Canberra.
Marc Henri Piault, anthropologist and cinematographer, is director of
research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
Professor of visual anthroplology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales, he is currently engaged on work concerning Brazil.
In 2000 he published for Nathan, Paris, Anthropologie et Cinéma.
Some brief references to my scarse credits are to be found in the film
listing Cibo all’Isre.
This new Committee has carried out its task following some basic
ground rules: the relevance of the film to the festival theme, the
presence of an ethnographic perspective, the contextualisation of
events and the articulation of the concepts. Above all, another key
element: the integrity of intentions and the results.
The selection that has flown, even with some little imbalances, has
permitted a division into five sub themes on which the calendar for the
various projection sessions has been built: Production and Processing;
Cookery and Cooking; Rituals; Food Feasts; Food and Social Identity.
The second category of listings regards those 10 films in the
retrospective and out of competition section.
Since the first editions of our Festival we have always added to those
documentaries in competition several films of historical, academic
and/or artistic interest that contribute, widen and diversify the sum of
the relationships between the world of images, whether of
documentation or fiction, with the chosen theme of each
manifestation.
One gets the impression that, somehow, these fictional films, inserted
into the Festival thematic context, through a strange mechanism of
orientation and focalisation of interest, manifest aspects of the
documentaries that deal with the festival theme. To be more clear, in a
film like La Ricotta, the themes of food/hunger/under class are
illuminated under the spotlight whilst other of the film elements more
prominently dealt with, historically speaking, by critics (anticlerism,
cinema in the cinema, the use of paintings in the scenography etc.),
remain in the shadows.
It must also be said that the traceableness of fictional films, especially
if they are not too old, or better still if they are still on release, do not
present any problems
The situation with regards to documentaries is very different: to find
out where they are kept and to obtain them is always difficult and
sometimes becomes a desperately hard task. This was the case with
Les Sang des Betes: Franju’s film is mentioned in all the books on
cinema history as being unobtainable in France, or at least from
public institutions responsible for the preservation of the
cinematographic patrimony, that is the Cinémathèque Francaise. In
the end we found it at the British Film Institute in London.
I mention this episode not so much as to underline how the
organisation of a festival such as ours, at the end of the day is above
all a service activity: a service to the Sardinian public, film academics
and students interested in cinema and anthropology, to the young
people and film directors who are given the opportunity to present
and discuss their work and, indirectly, a service to the city of Nuoro.
After eleven editions, however, I have the impression that one
important aspect still remains unfulfilled, that of the Festival as an
instrument to create ability and awaken interest, to train the young in
visual anthropology and promote visual methods in the fields of study
and research: I think this is the goal which our future commitments
should be orientated toward.
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