The China-focused selection  of short films has been confirmed and is now an award. Fan Popo will be the outstanding guest, while the University of Bologna will be a partner for the first time.

Spoken by more than a billion people, Mandarin Chinese is the second language more used in the world. China is growing more and more, both in economy and in demography. Therefore, this year Ennesimo Film Festival decided to confirm “Sinofonie” for the third consecutive year. It is a selection of short films in Chinese, shot by Chinese-speaking directors living in and outside China. This year, the selection becomes an award to highlight the importance given to it by the festival. The prize will be assigned by the audience during the film showing at 5pm on Friday, May 3rd, at BLA (Fiorano).

Besides the film selection, Ennesimo set up the Sinofonie award to valorize the struggle of those who can recount the complex Asiatic contemporary time using cinema. Chinese director Fan Popo* will kick off the afternoon. Living in Germany, he’s renowned for the censorship he was subjected to in China. 

Ennesimo Film Festival, together with Ennesimo Academy, created a learning path in order to connect young people to cinema. Thanks to the partnership with the faculty of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Modern Cultures, at the University of Bologna, the students will subtitle a short film. It’s a professional development project for university students, who can put into practice their linguistic competences and see the product of their work projected on the big screen. This will be possible also thanks to a workshop which allowed these young people to approach cinema. In April, Federico Ferrari – artistic director of the festival – analysed some technical issues related to short films and subtitles in a seminar organized by Ennesimo Academy. Finally, students attending the course Chinese Language and Literature will be guests in Fiorano during the film showing. 

“In a period like the one we’re living in, we believe in the importance of expanding the international debate, involving people – both Chinese and not – who know China inside out.” – says Federico Ferrari – “We’ll talk about suburbs, geographical and linguistic borders, as well as places and cultures that are redefining their relationship with historical and modern China. These are the main topics of Sinofonie, which is now enhanced by the key partnership with the Languages department of the University of Bologna. Together with this department, we’d like to build a bridge between cultures and films we are not familiar with.”

The Sinofonie film selection is curated by a team of sinologists, mediators and Chinese language and culture professors: Sabrina Ardizzoni (University of Bologna), Federico Picerni (Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice/University of Bologna), and Clara Longhi, expert in cinema and partner in many Festivals both in Italy and in China (University SSML Carlo Bo/IULM Milan).

*Fan Popo (1985) is a Chinese director, critic and activist. Famous for his documentary Mama Rainbow, Popo has soon become an icon in the Chinese LGBT world. He’s now living in Berlin, also due to the censorship the Chinese regime imposed on him and his works.