TWO CITYES, ONE FESTIVAL
by Mauro Tozzi, Artistic Director Visionaria
From three years Visionaria has become the festivalof two towns: Siena and Piombino. One yearly appointment with two separate programming which aim is to create, with evergrowing accuracy and freshness, an area dedicated to short film, short story and audio-visual experimentation linked to new communication media on one hand and to the most original and interesting experiences which move within the orbit of the electronic image on the other hand. There are two different realities, both very attractive. Siena boasts a great medieval history and an artistic heritage of first level, it is perhaps a museum itself, but open to the future; its social life is fragmented in a multitude of clubs, associations, quarters and it is strongly fastened to its identity. Piombino leaning over the sea from a square which is worth a journey merely to visit it, is strongly looking for transforming itself: no more linked to the steel, but a town with a curious, attentive and interesting social fabric going towards the future with very important targets and records for the whole region. Visionaria is in the middle. With its history lasting 15 years during which it tried to exalt the research and the freshness through different expressive forms, to give contribution in making young authors and artists known as well as their audio visual works, showing this way the great vitality of a field which is changing under our eyes with an amazing speed like the one of short film, of digital experimentation and of the new frontiers of communication. Moreover it has tried, with not always adequate financial means, to show us the meaning of the experimental research that is looking for something unknown, unfamiliar and apparently marginal and to investigate the reality, dismantling and reassembling its elements without censorships. During these years Visionaria tried mainly to show how much is important, let’s say necessary, to invest in culture or better, in not conventional culture focusing its attention on works of quality able to develop ideas and planning skills and which aim is to create new professional competences also through cultural contaminations. These are the guidelines which we have followed in trying to create fixed and dynamic structures inside our region and with all the social experiences which need our attention. Probably we have given free rein to our imagination, probably the reality we are competing with is not so perfect, but we think the message is clear: Visionaria would like to be, first of all, a workshop and a laboratory where research, creativity and experimentation develop themselves not only once a year during the festival, but all over the year: it also would like to be a regional driving force open to everybody offering activities and training, documentation and digital archives. This year’s edition we are preparing and which is starting with these few lines of presentation, intends to stress again which potential Visionaria could have, if only we had the due resources.
BEETWEEN NECESSITY AND VIRTUE
by Duccio Barlucchi, President of Visionaria
The XV edition of Visionaria is character i z e d by the ma k i n g of an idea that ac comp a n i e s us since ever: a Region based Festival. Visionaria has created within the years a tight partnership, based on trust, with the Italian authors and has assisted to the progressive growth if the work of the video-makers and of foreign schools of cinema. To this were flanked a video production and multimedia activity and actions of exchanges with Festivals worldwide, that have led to the presence of Visionaria or of masterpieces by us selected, produced and/or awarded in many festivals abroad, and to the signature in 2002 in Siena, of a protocol with Medi@terra, Les Rencontres Audiovisuelles, il Canaria MediaFest, Brno Sixteen, the Festival of Avanca and CinEco: a meeting among various festivals that work in the Mediterranean to promote the audiovisual language, and the knowledge of the technologies that produce and change it. This prolonged and dedicated work - carried out by a staff of people who did not surrender to the organizational, technical and economic difficulties they had to face - is also confronted with the administration of the Tuscan Region and the Municipality of Siena, where the Festival is born in 1991 and where it developed hand to hand with the Administration of the Town Council, the Fondazione, and the Banca Monte di Paschi, the Santa Maria della Scala Museum, the University of the Studies, and many others partners and fellow-travelers. Siena was important in these years for the variety of the appointments on audiovisual, where Visionaria has created its own space and identity. By juxtaposition, in various areas of Tuscany there is the request of facing initiatives of this kind. By this fact and because of the richness of the contacts and exchanges that build our main patrimony, the goal to enlarge Visonaria operations in the territory of our regions. The new partnership with the town of Piombino is an example of all this. In an historical period of great general concentration especially in the field of culture, the artistic vitality and the technological development of the audiovisual impose various and polyedric operations, that unable the operators to build events of quality in a stimulating and exploring variety. The intention is to attract proposals and interests and to look for fertility where it exists, bringing an expertise and competences able to contribute to build initiatives of a good level and of good visibility. This can be the direction where we have to move, collaborating with partners that are really interested and have a sensitiveness to develop a cultural policy with a clear artistic ethic, able to open up and to constantly redefine, propose, acquire, spread, involve; in the end make Culture
