San Diego Italian Film Festival Celebrates 13th Year And New Executive Director

Speaker 1: 00:00 The San Diego Italian film festival kicks off its 13th year tonight at MOPA with a madcap murder mystery and new leadership KPBS film critic Beth hock Amando speaks with the new executive director Deanna Augustini and artistic director, Antonio [inaudible]. The Italian film festival is going to be kicking off and Deanna has just taken over as executive director of the San Diego Italian film festival. So what is this like and do you have some big plans? Speaker 2: 00:32 I do have big plans them. Um, you know, this is, has been such a fun and really interesting and ride for me. I joined a festival basically as soon almost as a moved to San Diego and I had the fortune to meet both Antonio and Victor Latosha who's our former executive director on who's now the president of the board officially. So I'm really excited cause I'm still gonna be working with both of them. But at the same time, I think that this time really got me to better understand your organization and to also grow it. And both in Tanya and I were able to put our soul and sweat and tears and blood and everything into the organization and for the future we're known as the San Diego Italian film festival, but our organization is technically the Italian American arts and culture association of San Diego. But what I'm trying to say is that there's also a very strong cultural component that I think through the years has been coming out through our programming, a lot of bring in movies that also speak to the communities that open up dialogue, that um, are meaningful in bringing our perspective and that of the Italian perspective being, you know, even from a simple comedy to more a structured drama or documentary, but at that same time would allow our audience to not just see that but also reflect on what they're going through here in San Diego and globally. Speaker 2: 02:02 Also in terms of some situations from, I dunno, immigration to family dynamics and whatnot. So I think that we want to push a lot on that and grow that aspect, including potentially also other forms of art. Like, even this year with 50 value, we have a special night dedicated to and enough Atlanta who's one of Eataly's, most well known writers. So I think that as we move forward, we're going to try and expand the cultural side also of the organization together with of course the starting from, from the movies. Speaker 1: 02:35 Antonio, you are the artistic directors. So the programming choices fall upon you mostly. And what are you looking for in these films? What are the kinds of things that you feel are necessary to be programmed here at the San Diego Italian film festival? Well, first of all, um, the incredible good movies, contemporary movies. So the idea is that our audience can pretend to be Italy Speaker 3: 03:00 and come to more pie. And ah, we just, well, the 16 months of delay watching the best of our contemporary production as if they were in Italy. So that is very important. So we pay attention a lot of attention to the quality of our movies. If they're comedies, if they're dramas, if they're documentaries or something that is in between, you know, these labels that sometimes don't make any, any, any sense. For example, we have a movie selfie that uses a lot of technology of a selfie phone to document the lives of two teenagers in Italy. It's an extraordinary piece of a filmmaking art. And then this year we have a very big, uh, innovative, uh, programming that is our restraint to show short film awards. We put together a competition of shorts are open to everybody either if you are a, an Italian director or you are an American director or a director coming from whichever part of the world. If you have an idea of what is Italian culture today, you are Italian American culture or that idea of eagerly today, you can participate to our competition. So we put together a jewelry and independent jury. We just made the first selection of movies and the jury decided, you know, the, the, the two main awards so that we're going to give during, uh, our, uh, gala night. Speaker 2: 04:31 So for full disclosure, I was one of the judges and I got to see all of the films that were in the competition. And there's really this great breadth of films in there because you have documentaries, you have dramas, you have comedies, you have really simple, beautiful little documentaries and much broader ones. Speaker 3: 04:51 The, you know, 60 shorts and a short can be also up to 30 minutes. And so he was also very difficult to, to select, you know, the, the, the, the finalist, it was difficult to reach this number that, you know, seems to be a lot 20 Speaker 2: 05:06 part of what the festival is about is about starting a conversation. So explain what people can expect in terms of there's going to be post film discussions and there's going to be filmmakers and panelists and what can they expect? Well, during the 50 Valley we try to bring movies that have also a broader meaning and impact. And so we, like you said, we always have Q and A's. One of the movies that we're really excited about, for example, it's called Comandante. So this year as part of our partnership outreach, we were able to partner up with the Milano film festival, the Naples film festival, and with Chiba quarto, the Milano film festival gave us this incredible documentary about a specifically a very delicate moment in Italian history, which was around the seventies. Uh, uh, you know, there were a lot of attacks like terrorist attacks within Italy by Italians and by extra mists in, in Italy. And so this is a tricky period, historical period, but also a very complicated one that needs kind of, um, some explanation and some, some sort of a introduction also. And so on. Tanya is going to to do that to better support our audience in terms of understanding what they're about to see followed by a Q and a as well. Speaker 1: 06:27 And Antonio opening and closing night usually draw a lot of attention and a lot of buzz, but are, is there a smaller film that you'd like to give a little a boost to and get people's attention for? Speaker 3: 06:39 Yeah, absolutely. Our closing night is going to be dedicated to an incredible comedy. [inaudible] LA Luna, the man who bought the moon is a comedy from a director from Sardinia. We screened a couple of years ago, his first feature LAR vitro. It was an incredible comedy's lash musical, short in black and white. And this movie on the other hand is a movie that they can be considered a fantasy movie science fiction movie, a strange movie, something that goes in place with the genre and in a, in a, in a way that is also very romantic because you know, the reason man from Sardinia that is in love with the, her, his wife and he decided to buy the moon for his wife. And so the Americans are really mad about that. And so this is the, this triggers the narrative. So yeah, I would encourage everybody to come to as many movies as possible, but if you need to pick something, uh, lighthearted but also very, very particular come to this one. Speaker 1: 07:42 All right, well I want to thank you both very much for previewing this year. San Diego Italian film festival. Thank you for asking guys. That was Beth Huck Amando speaking with Deanna Agostini and Antonio out. The San Diego Italian film festival begins tonight and runs through October 27th.