Italian Film Festival in Budapest
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Story by
Nefeli Tsiapou
Italian Film Festival in Budapest!
The Mittel Cinema Fest is the largest promotion event for Italian cinema in Central Europe. The festival, promoted by Istituto Luce Cinecittà in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institutes in Budapest, Krakow, Warsaw, Bratislava and Prague, in countries defined as emerging markets and its itinerant formula allows to optimize resources and synergies.
Especially in Budapest, The festival took place on 4 to 15 November.The event takes place in Puskin cinema every year.
I met a Hungarian girl who was helping voluntarily the festival. She wa really excited about it. I was curious how she decided to go there and also I did not know that this festival is happening to Budapest these days. Her name is Lilly Létássy and was willing tohave a chat with me.
How did you decide to participate on this festival as a volunteer?
I have been studying Italian from the secondary school and I have always been interested the Italian culture. Consequently, I started going to the Italian institute to attend specific events or watch some Italian films. After this, I decided to participate as a volunteer because I am very passionate about filmography in general but more specifically in the Italian filmography. It was a great opportunity for me to get to know and talk to directors, actors or screen players of the films.
Are you interested in Italian Cinematography?
Yes. I totally love it. I was watching a lot of Italian movies to practice Italian in the past. By watching these movies I got to know more of the cinematography and the characteristics of the Italian Cinema.
Although Italy had many brilliant directors some decades ago, during 90's and 00's Italian Cinematography was not in the fore ground of European Cinema. Fortunately there is a big change the last few years and many good Italian films came out. What do you think about it?
I think that here in Europe , we are not used to watching European movies. People are watching American movies no matter where we are and some movies of their own country. In my opinion, most of the American movies are not special, they are very predictable and one-sided. From an artistic point of view, there are more interesting movies to watch in any kind of European country. Here in Budapest it is rare to watch Italian, French or Greek films. There are only some artistic cinemas which play "alternative" movies.
Do you find any similarities between Italian and Hungarian Films?
Not really. Even if the arguments can be similar depending on the genre of the movie, the solutions and the choices of the performances are very different. It obviously comes from the differences between the cultures and the mentlities.This is why it is interesting to watch other countries movies’. It gives you a glimpse of their culture ont he screen The goals of presenting the Italian Filmography to a hungarian audiance is simple. It gives a chance to hungarians to expand their horizons who are interested in the Italian culture for any reason.
During the projections there is Hungarian subtitle and the conversations after the movies are also translated by a professional translator making it possible for the Hungarian audience to take a part of it.