Working Title Film Festival launches its second edition with a more substantial programme than in the debut.
A special screening, the grotesque drama Maquinaria Panamericana by Joaquin Del Paso, an italian second viewing after Torino Film Festival.
An homage to the directors Razi Mohebi e Soheila Javaheri with Cittadini del nulla e Refugee in Italy: a fiction feature and documentary on the refugees’ social and inner state, illustrated by the aware point of view of who has gone through the same experiences.
Two panels discussion: one to reason about the complications, found by refugees and asylum seekers to enter the work world, the other one to analyse risks and opportunities about web’s and robot’s impact on the human labour.
An audiovisual workshop on the documentary language with the students at Liceo artistico Boscardin in Vicenza, who will show their short documentary films on the theme of work.
Screening in loop of Netflix documentaries about international designers, and a party, at Exworks creative space.
But the most important news is the international competition, designed for under 35 aged filmmakers (with some exceptions). 17 films from Europe, Canada and Japan, that illustrate the contemporary work world through different styles. A world in which the factory, the twentieth-century work emblem, is less and less present, in which the economic, social and identity crisis is the predominant line, in which persons aren’t quitting to find creatively new prospects and viewpoints.
For example many young Chinese have leaved the rural village of Diman, where is set Mingong by Davide Crudetti, with the idea of making a fortune, working as bricklayers in the megalopolis of
Guangzhou. A conversely journey is headed out by Eriko, the main character of Miewoharu / Eriko, pretended by Akiyo Fujimura. The distance between Tokyo and her hometown is big as the gap between her desire of becoming a successful actress and the hard awareness of her identity and limits.
Maybe it’s not a coincidence that two of the film in competition are set in Greece, the littles Country where two big crisis that have marked our times, meet: the economic one and the migrants one.
Bag Mohajer / Refugee Bag by Adrian Oeser is a very visual and political powerful documentary: “ the refugee bag” is a based in Athen project by a german fashion designer, who, helped by some refugees, make bags from life jackets, retrieved on the beaches in Lesbos, the only trace left by the migrants landed (or wracked). In the short film Kalanta / Carols by Thanos Psichogios the twelve year old Andreas is knocking on several doors among the Athene’s houses, offering Christmas Carols for a few Euros, while his unemployed father is doing his utmost.
The main character of Per chi vuole sparare by Pierluca Ditano works as well for a few Euros. The camera follows Peppino in Porta Palazzo in Turino, the biggest open air market in Europe. Um uns die Welt / The world we live in by Hanna Fischer, Sofiia Melnyk e Nina Prange hybridizes documentary and animation to sketch the portrait of three Eastern Europe workers, hit by the crisis, into the productive heartlands of Europe.
The director Bruno Chouinard in Pouding Chôumer / Requiem for Unemployment collects the stories of temp workers, who as a result of some neoliberal laws, have been living Kafkaesque situations à la I,Daniel Blake by Ken Loach. In The Netherlands as well has been underway a welfare retrofit in a corporate way. But Nico van Hasselt, the 92 years old protagonist of De Hoeder / The Shepherd by Joost van der Wiel keeps doing his job as a doctor “in an old fashion way”, putting humanity first. It focuses on a doctor, in this case a surgeon, as well, Mechanick, a short animated film by Margherita Clemente, Lorenzo Cogno, Maria Garzo, Tudor A. Moldovan.
During his job, he has faced difficult choices, regarding the labile and labile boundary between human and machine. Two elements we find in a very different meaning in Radio Popolare by Giacomo Coerezza, where the newsroom’s microphones of the historic Milanese Radio have transmitted social and political passions and a sense of community for forty years.
In The potato eaters the documentary filmmaker Ben De Raes interprets the contemporary economy in a visionary way, linking the hyper-automated microcosm of Antwerp’s port and the thoughts on the peasant’s labour, that Vincent van Gogh wrote in the letters to his brother. Another port, in Molfetta (Apulia) and its fishermen are the main character of Mare Nostro by Andrea Gadaleta Caldarola, that collects memoirs, gestures and rites of a job that has been disappearing. From coast to the Bari inland: the documentary by Michele Vicenti Storie di pietra. L’arte di ritrovare il tempo nella Murgia, a peculiar beautiful karstic plateau, holding natural, archaeological and cultural treasures, which are at the origin of crafts, bringing to the rediscovery of a poetic relationship with the ecosystem. The job (or better the jobs) of Cece Rasoja, E torra s’istadi‘s by Alice Murgia protagonist is strictly connected to the rhythm of the nature, from the cork extraction during the summer, to the craft works during the winter. The back-to-the-land, but without false idyllic, is the theme developed in I giganti della montagna by Silvia Berretta. For the two young men interviewed, the effort of breeding cows in a depopulate valley in Bergamo is not only physical, but also cultural.
Two different cultures and visions of work is pursued by two generation of woodworkers, who confront themselves in Legnamè by Elisa Casadei, Nicola Lioia, Mauro Pibiri e Alice Ronchi. From woodworkers to electricians: this is the profession Mohamud, Ahmadou, Mamadou e Achmed heve been learning in a vocational school in Bruxelles. In the observational documentary Grands Travaux, which shootings followed a whole school year, the directors Olivia Rochette e Gerard-Jan Claes catch the four between carefreeness and the typical teenager’s insecurity, and the complex building of their own identity inside the belgian society’s melting pot.
A kaleidoscope of views, in which every film, each in its way, contributes to photograph a change of paradigm in comparison with a Twentieth-century’s vision of work. There aren’t anymore those kind of certainties and each protagonist of these films, deep down, has been searching for new one.
Marina Resta WTFF artistic director
Marina Resta (1984) graduated in Dams Cinema and Cinema, Television and Multimedia Production at the University of Bologna and Filmwissenschaft at Freie Universität Berlin. She attended the course of Documentary at the Civica Scuola di Cinema in Milano and the Master in Production and communication for cinema, audiovisual and digital media at Ca’ Foscari in Venice. She produced, wrote, directed and edited the documentary films Milano fa 90 (2013) and L’acqua calda e l’acqua fredda (2015).