Events – Page 2 – Voci e Immagini dal Dialogo Interculturale nel Mediterraneo

Masterclass with Babak Karimi (MedFilm Festival 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award)

Iranian-born actor and editor, son of director and actor Nosrat Karimi and actress Alam Danai. It carries out his activity between Italy, Iran and France. He made his debut in front of the camera at the age of ten, in that is considered the first film of Iranian neorealism, Doroshkechi (The coachman, 1971). The same year he moved to Italy where he studied cinema specializing in shooting and editing. For fifteen years he devoted himself to the making of documentaries as an operator and editor. In 1991, in collaboration with the painter Mahshid Mussavi, he brought to Italy the first Iranian film officially distributed in commercial theaters, Bashu, the little foreigner by Bahram Beyzai. In the following years he worked on interconnection and promotion between Italy and Iranian cinema, writing the Italian dialogues for the films of Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf, Panahi, Jalili, Farhadi and collaborating as a consultant with various festivals and reviews. As an editor he has worked with Abbas Kiarostami, Babak Payami, Vera Belmont, Pasquale Scimeca, Maurizio Zaccaro, Gianfranco Pannone and others. He has been a lecturer in editing at the Experimental Center of Cinematography in Rome and the Accademia dell’Immagine de L’Aquila. In 2011 he starred in the film A Separation by Asghar Farhadi (winner of the Golden Bear in Berlin and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film) winning the Silver Bear for Best Actor.
The partnership with Farhadi will also continue with the director’s second film, The Past. In both cases, Karimi oversaw the dubbing and personally dubbed his characters in Italian. In 2016 he starred in the film winner of the Prix du Scénario at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival The Client, also directed by Farhadi. Other films: Fish Dead by Ruholla Hejazi (Iran 2016); Noces by Stephan Straker (Belgium-France-Luxemburg 2016); Invasion by Shahram Mokri (Iran 2017); As long as there is Prosecco there is Hope by Antonio Padovan (Italy-2017); The Vertical Line by Mattia Torre (Italy 2018); Gaze (short) by Farnoosh Samadi (Iran 2017); A Nameless Story by Roberto Ando ‘(Italy-2018); Delay (short) by Ali Asgari (Iran – 2018); Il Seems My Son by Costanza Quatriglio (Italy 2018); of The Role (short) by Farnoosh Samadi (Iran 2018); Iron Deficiency of Azadeh Abadpur (Iran 2019); Yalda by Massoud Bakhshi (Iran, France, Germany, Luxemburg 2019); Children of Giuseppe Bonito (Italy 2020); Winter by Giulio Mastromauro (Italy 2020); Careless Crime by Shahram Mokri (Iran 2020), We Have To by Reza Dormishian (Iran-2020), Cinema Shahre Ghesse by Keyvan Alimohammadi and Omid Bonakdar (Iran, 2020), The Life Ahed (La Vita Davanti a Se) by Edoardo Ponti (Italy-USA, 2020) (see complete bio attached)

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ARABPOP presentation at MedFilm Festival 2020

Wednesday 11 November 2020 at 17:00 – Online presentation of ARABPOP as part of the MedFilm Festival “Readings from the Mediterranean” session, live streaming from the Festival’s Facebook page.

Participants:

Chiara Comito, co-curator and author,

Anna Gabai, author,

Luce Lacquaniti, author.

Debate moderated by Ada Barbaro, professor of Arabic literature at Sapienza in Rome.

Introduction by Veronica Flora, MedFilm Festival

In Italy, the so-called Arab Springs of 2011 have often been analyzed by commentators and journalists only as unexpected outbursts of violence or as the result of power games between Western states. The short-sightedness of a thought flattened on Islamophobic positions prevented us from really knowing who went down to the squares of Tunis, Cairo or Damascus: a young generation that asked for freedom, calling into question political, religious and gender affiliations. This spirit of freedom has been collected and elaborated by Arab intellectuals, artists and writers who in the cinema, on the walls of their cities, in novels, poems and songs have told the genesis and the consequences of the protest movements. The contributions of this volume intend to give credit to this incredible cultural season, and to make the Italian public aware of the literature, music, films, artistic and theatrical works born from this period of revolt.

“I believe that revolutions must not lie in order not to lose their credibility. I think they must collect the statements of witnesses, in which details are intertwined that tell of the pain, the assault on the cities, the open fire without restraint on the demonstrators. […] We need truth in times of war, because human life and death are not things to be taken lightly. We need a dose of innocent lie, as in writing, in times of peace and love, to sweeten existence in the face of prevailing cruelty.“

Khaled Khalifa, Syrian writer

Chiara Comito is an Arabist, has a degree in Languages and Relations and Institutions of Asia and Africa. In 2012 he founded Editoriaraba, the main Italian website on contemporary Arabic literature. He has written for several newspapers “Internazionale”, “Vice”, “Arab Media Report”. He works as a geopolitical analyst dealing with the Middle East and collaborates with literary and film festivals, publishing houses, bookshops and libraries to promote Arab culture.

Silvia Moresi is an Arabist and translator, teaches Contemporary Arabic Culture and Literature at the Istituto di Alti Studi SSML Carlo Bo, in Bari. She has translated, for the Jouvence publishing house, the anthology My most beautiful poems (2016) by Nizar Qabbani and the poem collection Eleven Planets (2018) by Mahmud Darwish. Since 2017 she is the author, for “Q Code Magazine”, of the column Atlante Letterario Arabo, translated into French and republished in the magazine “Orient XXI”.