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This is why we decided to consider the Festival as a sort of laboratory, a space where the documentary is constructed and deconstructed. First of all, we made a very precise choice for the retrospective: Isaki Lacuesta, a young author who can already boast a great number of works, has always challenged himself by constantly reworking his own material, from which he gets every time new inspiration and ideas. Speaking of reworking, we are happy to open the festival with the special projection of Chronique d’un film. 52 years later, Edgar Morin will come back to Florence to present a project on which he is collaborating with three video artists, who have had the opportunity to re-edit unused material of Chronique d’un été. The latter had its genesis right here in Florence, during the first edition of the Festival, when the great French sociologist was a member of the jury, together with – among others – Jean Rouch. From the birth of modern documentary to an open cinema which revises the past and absorbs it to create a work of art that is difficult to classify.

At the border between creation and memory is also the new initiative Storie Mobili, in which the Festival will act as co-producer: during the first two days of the Festival, the spectators of the Cinema Odeon will be interviewed and asked about their cinema memories linked to their attendance of the cinemas in the center. One of the interviews will then be projected during the award ceremony. All our efforts have been directed towards attracting as many professionals as possible to Florence during the Festival, in order for the town to speak for eight days the language of documentary. Our efforts are obviously reinforced by the renewed collaboration with the Italian Doc Screenings, the Italian documentary market – four days in which experts discuss the cinema of the future.

The Festival-laboratory is also and above all enriched by its collaborations: after four years, the partnership with CCC Strozzina is strengthened, giving origin to a special section, which includes three documentaries and focuses on the subject of the exhibition Declining Democracy (taking place in Palazzo Strozzi): rethinking democracy between utopia and participation. The same topics are also addressed in two very rare films from our archives, which we will show in the section Adotta un doc. The idea of the Festival as a place of debate and exchange becomes a reality through the many common threads characterizing the various sections of the festival. Ten years after 9/11, in the year of the Arab Spring, we constantly received new inputs to think about rebellion, pacifism and dissidence (in particular in the USA, yesterday and today), so these topics are inevitably present also in the films we selected. In the section Panorama we present a work in progress which takes us back to 9/11, the starting point of our considerations – thus creating a circle, in terms of both contents and structure. Another strong presence in the films of the Festival – maybe not by chance, given that we speak of utopia, thus of future – are teen-agers, portrayed in a new way in the competitions. The mirror represented by the screen will reflect the other face of an age which is often described through clichés. I will stop here: these are only a couple of the common threads you can find in our program…and since I mentioned the idea of participation, every spectator will have the task – and hopefully the pleasure – to find other threads!

To conclude, one last note: what you will see is the result of wonderful and enthusiastic teamwork. At least in our own small way, participation is not a utopia!

Maria Bonsanti - Alberto Lastrucci

Directors of the Festival dei Popoli