The 2004 AsoloArtFilmFestival was held from 25 to 31 October.
The Festival was revived in 2001 in the wake of the ‘Festival del Film sull’Arte e di Biografie d’Artista’ founded in 1973 by Flavia Paulon. The first of its kind, in being autonomous, the Asolo Festival has won international acclaim thanks to the participation of famous directors such as Andrej Tarkovskij, Luciano Emmer and Adrian Maben, and of Italian and foreign art and film critics. The festival was refounded by the A.I.A.F., chaired by Professor Lionello Puppi, as the AsoloArtFilmFestival, maintaining continuity but also opening up to new expressive languages.
The 2004 Festival received 673 film entries from 54 countries on five continents, divided into four sections: Art Films, Biographies of Artists, Videoart and Computer Art (to which an open forum was dedicated) and Productions on the visual arts and music made by recognised film schools, specialist secondary schools and universities.
A space was dedicated to the study of special topics each day, including the triple appointment on the situation of the artistic heritage in areas of crisis, with a particular focus on Kosovo and Iraq. Participants in the discussion included Prof. Giovanni Bergamini - director of the Egyptian Museum in Turin and author of the book I datteri di Babilonia - and Major Facciorusso of the Caribinieri Cultural Heritage Protection Command.
The jury, chaired by Luciano Emmer, of Emmanuelle Ferrari, Maria Masau Dan, Virgilio Boccardi and Graziano Arici, awarded the following prizes:

GRAN PREMIO ASOLO for the best work in the competition

INTO THE NIGHT WITH MARINA ABRAMOVIC AND ISMAEL IVO
length 67’13’’
Director: Edda Baumann-von Broen, Hanna Leissner Germany
Producer: Avanti media GbR
The first meeting, in the Berlin night, between the performer Marina Abramovic and the dancer and choreographer Ismael Ivo. In the lively, cosmopolitan atmosphere of the German capital, they discover that their radical approach to art is not the only thing that ties them.

JURY’S VERDICT: For the director’s ability to insert the intimacy of the dialogue between the two artists Marina Abramovic and Ismael Ivo, and the physical implications of their artistic expression, in the most sophisticated places of the Berlin night.

PREMIO ASOLO for the best film on art

INTOLLERANZA 2004
length 57’6’’ Director: Bettina Ehrhardt Germany
Producer: BCE Film
The documentary, dedicated to Luigi Nono, concentrates on the ‘stage action’, as the maestro defined his work, whose fundamental themes are the fight against dictatorship, indifference and burocracy. In particular, it focuses on Intolleranza, a work from the beginning of the 1960s against oppression and racial hatred, thanks to the work with the black choreographer and dancer Koffi Kôkô.

JURY’S VERDICT: For the way in which the director reassessed the work conceived in 1960 by the composer Luigi Nono against violence, with appropriate editing, reconstructing the musical and figurative direction of his work and bringing it up to date with logical additions.

PREMIO ASOLO for the best artist’s biography

TAOISM IN A BOWL OF WATER Tan Dun- A Chinese Composer
length 57’21’’
Director: Andreas Morell Germany
Producer: Zdf 3sat Musik
A journey between New York and China in the company of Tan Dun, with archive images from the cultural revolution. John Cage has said of him: ‘in his music we are led to listen to the sounds of the nature that surrounds us. This is why the music of Tan Dun is indispensable, now that East and West, finally together, have become our home’.

JURY’S VERDICT: The film offers the complex cultural background of the Chinese composer, now one of the leaders of the American avant-garde, with poetic accents and a careful choice of images and intelligent editing. The creative itinerary of his music is effectively shown through archive images of the cultural revolution and visual suggestions taken from nature.

PREMIO ASOLO for the best video/computer art work

FAST FILM
length 14’
Director: Virgil Widrich Austria
Producer: Virgil Widrich Film & Multimedia Produktionsgmbh
An experimental film in which the animation is created by using cult frames from the history of cinema, folded and edited as if they were origami, in a very fast, disorienting pursuit.

JURY’S VERDICT: The director ironically traces the history of cinema through the metaphor of the journey, rendered with an urgent rhythm and the original expedient of origami.

PREMIO ASOLO for the best experimental production

DIE FLUTUNG VON VICTORIA
length 27’
Director: Ulu Braun, Germany
Producer: Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen

This animated fiction with its surreal atmosphere tells the tale of an eccentric group of tourists who travel in time, by bus, crossing the plains that surround Lake Victoria, in Africa, prior to the tragic finale.

JURY’S VERDICT: For having used film animation in a new way, in expressionist style, and for the ability to present the disturbing atmosphere of the event contrasted with the naive forms and elementary colours of things and people.


PREMIO GIAN FRANCESCO MALIPIERO for the best soundtrack

ALFABET TAPIES
length 50’
Director: Daniel Hernàndez Spain
Producer: Alea TV
Intensive interview-portrait, using archive material, contributions by scholars and collectors and shot partly in his studio, in which the celebrated Catalan artist reveals his poetry, hopes and the function of art in his work and in contemporary society.

JURY’S VERDICT: Alberto Demestres’ music effectively and intelligently accompanies Tapies’ work and expertly punctuates the editing.

Special mentions:

Artist’s biography

ANSEL ADAMS
length 53’
Director: Ric Burns USA
Producer: Sierra Club Productions
Original letters, interviews with experts and intellectuals and, obviously, a long excursus through his work reconstruct the figure of Ansel Adams, pioneer of American photography in whose imagination the beauty and fragility of the real coexist with the glorification of original landscapes, in an indissoluble connection between man and nature.

Films on art

CLAUDIO ABBADO- HEARING THE SILENCE
length 67’
Director: Paul Smaczny Germany
Producer: EuroArts, RBB/ARTE
Interviews, orchestral pieces, reflections and declarations from exponents of the world of art and culture build up an intense portrait of Claudio Abbado, a legend of contemporary music.

ALFABET TAPIES
length 50’
Director: Daniel Hernàndez Spain
Producer: Alea TV
Intensive interview-portrait, using archive material, contributions by scholars and collectors and shot partly in his studio, in which the celebrated Catalan artist reveals his poetry, hopes and the function of art in his work and in contemporary society.

The FLAVIA PAULON career prize was awarded to Luciano Emmer, who with Gras was the first, between the critic and the teacher, to look at the problems relating to artistic creativity with extraordinary works which retain all their fascination. Awarding him the Flavia Paulon career prize, for the oldest festival in Italy dedicated to this type of cinema, is undoubtedly a duty.
Info: AsoloArtFilmFestival -Foresto Vecchio, 8- 31011 Asolo (TV) Italy
Tel. +39 0 423 520455 Fax +39 0-423 951320
E-Mail: info@asolofilmfestival.it - www.asolofilmfestival.it