CinemAmbiente has grown apace with the green film genre and ranks among major international environmental festivals.
The six-day Festival program features preview presentations of the best in recent environmental films. Films running in competition will be judged and awarded by nine juries in each of their related category, plus two new ones: Eating City, an international project on foodservice sustainability; and La casa di domani on good green practices.
Among the over 100 films on the program are Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s A Thirsty World, and Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzand’s Oceans, the latter of which will close the Festival on 5 June, World Environment Day, and will be shown simultaneously in 34 cities around Italy. Mr. Arthus-Bertrand is this year’s International Documentary Jury president, following last year’s jury president Michael Cimino. Other jury members are Neri Marcorè, who voiced the narrator’s role in the Italian version of Kingdom of the Oceans, and Luca Argentero, producer of We Want a Future, which will be presented at the Festival.
Among the films running in competition are Gianfranco Pannone’s latest documentary, Scorie in libertà, on the renewed interest in atomic energy in Italy, and Jeff Orlowski’s thought-provoking documentary, Chasing Ice, winner of the Sundance Festival Audience Award, which will be presented by renowned photographer James Balog.
The Ecokids section will open with the Italian preview showing of Chris Renoud and Kyle Balda’s 3D animated film, Dr Seuss’ The Lorax, already a box office hit in America. The economic crisis figures in several films and many observers see among its causes the overexploitation of resources. This theme is taken up by Jennifer Baichwal’s Payback, based on Margaret Atwood’s bestseller, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth; a teleconference discussion with Ms. Baichwal is scheduled during the Festival.
This year’s side events will include Ecoletture to be held every day at 6 p.m. at Caffè Blah Blah: round table debates on the range of lifestyles from the innovative to the sustainable.
The streets around the Festival venue will be turned into street markets on 2 and 3 June, when Fierambiente opens its stalls offering sustainable products. Returning by popular request is Parking Day on Sunday, 3 June, when a parking place will be transformed into a field.
This year CinemAmbiente proudly joins the City of Turin sustainability initiative Le città invisibili.
The economic crisis has not spared CinemAmbiente, forcing a change in the Festival’s admission policy. The morning showings for children are free of charge by previous reservation. The admission charge for the afternoon showings is a fair and sustainable €3.
In this era of budget cuts for cultural initiatives, it is even more important that CinemAmbiente audiences generously contribute to the Festival’s growth as one of the world’s leading environmental film festivals.