WTFF6 – A new beginning

The sixth edition of the Working Title Film Festival is indeed a new beginning, after a one-year break in 2021 and a fully digital edition in 2020, due to contingencies with which everyone has become familiar.

2022 means not only a return to screening in physical theatres and face-to-face meetings, but also the possibility to connect again with valuable partners such as Cinema Odeon, which will screen the competing feature films and short films in its completely renovated Nuova Sala Lampertico. On the other hand, the ExtraWorks section, focusing on hybrid and experimental video-works, as well as on video-art and performances, has found a new home: the social and cultural centre Caracol Olol Jackson, where EneceFilm will also hold their masterclass. Last but not least, the presentation of the magazine “Made in China Journal” will take place at Porto Burci, one more major cultural venue in town.

26 competing films will provide unprecedented insights on the world of work, cross-breeding and layering different languages. A few lines of thought are shared by works that are otherwise distant in terms of geography and style. One is certainly the attempt to re-process the 20th century, Fordism, and its memories – both collective and family memories – through the ever-increasing creative use of footage coming from public and private archives alike. One more is the conflictual and simultaneous presence of a hyper-capitalistic modernity and of archaic cultural superstructures, more often than not putting women’s skin at stake, especially in a few works that are set in Asia. And one more line of thought is the condition of the youth, balancing between seeking a job that can be meaningful and contribute to creating an identity, and a prosaic reality that is characterised by precarious prospects.

While the climate crisis highlights the urgent need for an environmental transition (or conversion) of the economy, numerous films have chosen to cast their gaze onto the mysterious and ambiguous laws that govern the connection between human beings and the animal world. A similarly lateral and revealing thinking can be found in art jobs, in their close entanglement of creative spirit and daily practice, a category to which this festival has given space each year again.

In Le magnétophone by Noémi Aubry and Les filles de chez Moreau by Pauline Pastry, the directors engage in connecting their grandmothers’ working past with the present situation, resorting to a peculiar use of family footage.

Daniele Atzeni in Inferru also draws from found footage, but in his case the fragments come from various public audio-visual archives, contributing to (re)creating the archetype of miners with its gloomy premonitions.

While the Sardinian director’s film portrays a world gone-by, Acquasanta by Gianfranco Piazza and Tito Puglielli is the story of a new beginning, the one of Palermo’s shipyards, whereas Combat Trauma Bag by Lorenzo Picarazzi is a “factory symphony”, projecting Vertov into the time of electronic music. Boramey by Tommaso Facchin and Ivan Franceschini takes us to Cambodia, where many young female workers suffer from mysterious fainting spells. The protagonist of Lemongrass Girl by Pom Bunsermvicha is a producer who receives a quite particular assignment. The title Lili Alone of Zou Jing’s film hints at the loneliness of the main character, who has to make a tough decision for the survival of her family. These three films show Asia on the edge between modernity and tradition through women’s point of view.