COMICOMEDY
curated by Johnny Shock, Greta Araldi, Gjergji Agolli, Andrea Scita, Pasquale Sfameli, Suellen Sfameli
This is an ancient dispute, but one that often recurs even in our own days: can a comic work lead to laughter without being trivial as a result? There is, in fact, a common feeling, perhaps as old as the idea of comedy itself, which holds that works that naturally lead us to the outrageous reaction that is laughter are by nature frivolous and empty. Unable to truly move the human soul, comedies simply entertain, distracting human beings from the authenticity of their lives, thanks to a physiological reaction. However, laughter, a universal, instinctive and sometimes uncontainable human expression, has been the object of the attention of, among others, intellectuals of the caliber of Baudelaire, who banished centuries of prejudice by going so far as to place comedy among the forms of expression belonging only to great artists. Having said that, let us shift our focus to cinema, a medium that has been confronted with comedy more than any other since its origins, from Buster Keaton to Charlie Chaplin. In Italy, a tradition of national and quality comedy cinema has perhaps today given way to a prejudice that identifies contemporary films of this type with commercial productions, full of stereotypes, at best trite and ritualized, and at worst a mirror of cultural backwardness. However, the crisis of intelligent comedy in cinema has been accompanied by the spread of comic works on the Internet, sometimes real short movies, capable of entertaining and distracting with simplicity, dialoguing with the present through social networks. It is within this resurgence of short comedy that our focus lies, which aims to identify the best international short films capable of making us look lightly at the complexity of our present, while indulging in a healthy and liberating laugh.
Selected films:
Giraffe, Janne Schmidt, Netherlands (2016)
Grab Them, Morgane Dziurla-Petit, Sweden (2020)
Kapitalistis, Pablo Munoz Gomez, Belgium (2017)
Kukista Ja Mehiläisistä (About Bird And Bees), J.J. Vanhanen, Finland (2017)
La Frittatina (The Delicious Omelette), Marcello Gori, Italy (2001)
Madam Black, Ivan Barge, New Zealand (2015)
Poisson De Mars (March Fool’s), Pierre-Marc Drouin e Simon Lamarre-Ledoux, Canada (2018)
Sex At The Ski Center, Heikki Ahola, Finland (2017)
Vitha, Francois Bierry, Belgium (2018)