Cinemambulante

The ninth edition of the Kino Guarimba film training program was held in Amantea (Calabria, Southern Italy) from the 10^th to the 22^nd of June 2024. The project was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Ministry of Culture in Taiwan and the Taipei Representative Office in Italy. Partners included: the Latin American residencies Acampadoc (Panama) and BoliviaLab (Bolivia), the festivals Caribe Atómico (Venezuela) and Pramana (Italy), MyAirBridge, Il Quotidiano del Sud, and Moleskine Foundation.

50 participants from 28 countries from all continents met during 12 days to conceive, shoot and edit short films resulting from their collaboration, of which 9 were delivered and screened during the closing event.

For the seventh year in a row, the project has built a non-formal training course in Amantea inspired by Montessori Education, built an international temporary community, and generated connections between participants and Amantea residents, who are directly involved in the artistic creation and active participants in the project.

THE PROGRAM OF THE 9TH EDITION

Kino Guarimba activities combine professional training, group work, and community events with the goal of fostering personal learning and growth, a sense of community, and collaboration.

During the first four days of the residency, we organized socialization and training activities to facilitate interpersonal connection, idea generation, and team building. We guided participants through the stories and people of Amantea to learn about our culture and territory through guided tours, lunches and dinners with typical products.

The second part of the program was dedicated to the making of the short films: the work teams formed independently and organized to conceive, shoot, and edit their short films.

Finally, we screened all the films made during the residency at an event open to the entire community.

The participants arrived in Amantea on June 10, and were hosted in rented apartments in the town, following the idea that sharing rooms and common spaces is an essential part of the educational process. We handed each of them the new version of La Guarimba tote bag, containing gadgets offered by our sponsors. Participants received typical local products such as boxes of Amarelli liquorice, packs of stuffed figs from Fichi Marano, and jars of artisanal pistachio cream from Bar Sicoli. Moleskine Foundation, on the other hand, supported the residency by giving us their notebooks, which we gift to each of the participants along with project stickers.

In the evening, a welcome dinner was held at our space Il Terrenito, where we welcomed all the artists with a home-cooked Calabrian meal by local cook Beatrice De Vita. Through our local products and typical dishes, we created a first moment of socialization according to the philosophy of food as a social glue and a tool to overcome the defensive barriers of shyness.

The welcome event constitutes a first step to help participants talk and get to know each other, and establish the first bonds.

The residency training activities began on the morning of June 11, at the Lido Azzurro in Amantea, one of our historical partners. After a breakfast offered to the participants, we arranged ourselves in a circle for a general presentation of the project, the rules of the game, and the team members.

We then did an intense, but very useful exercise to allow everyone to meet and further break the ice: speed dating, which involves the artists positioning themselves in front of each other and having a minute to talk before moving on to the next meeting. Despite the intense dynamic and emotional charge, the exercise allows everyone to meet all the other participants, striving to express themselves in the essentials, take note of the most interesting profiles, and take time to deepen their knowledge later.

The first, intensive morning ended with lunch at the Cantina Amarcord, which gave our guests the opportunity to try other local products accompanied by Calabrian wine.

After a break, we met at Terrenito for a guided tour of Amantea. We started from the modern town to get to the ruins of the castle, a walk that passed through the historic center, with the idea of retracing the millennial history of our territory backwards, showing the evidence of the passage of time, the change of the natural and architectural landscape, a symptom of the transformation of a town that still retains its traditions of fishermen and farmers.

We accompanied the walk with the stories, anecdotes and tales that build the intangible heritage of our community, also showing the places that have hosted La Guarimba over the years.

The tour was also an opportunity for participants to explore possible locations for their films, and get inspired by the places, people and landscapes for their stories.

The tour, as per tradition, ended at Bar Sicoli, where we were able to eat their famous pistachio ice cream together.

The third day was dedicated to training, with four workshops focused on the stages of film production.

At the Lido Azzurro, we started with the Masterclass “How to Organize a Kino Production”, curated by Residency Tutor Oscar Peña González, a Spanish cinematographer with on-set experience in Spain, Italy and Latin America. Oscar outlined the basics of how to organize a small production team for a short film at Kino, following the philosophy of guerrilla cinema, and provided useful tips and guidance on managing actors, locations and production plans, focusing on the practical cases of Amantea.

Next, the Masterclass “Live Sound” was held, curated by Sound Tutor Cecilia Keirstead, a sound designer and recordist from the United States, for the first time on the Kino Guarimba team. Cecilia showed how to properly use the equipment we provide for participants, talking about the process of recording ambient sounds, dialogues and noises needed to build the soundtrack of a film.

She also talked about how to plan on-set filming in order to achieve quality sound and how to arrange locations, as well as the basics of how to use the boom microphone. Both of the first masterclasses were attended by all 50 artists.

In the afternoon, the Guarimba offices hosted the “Basics of Editing” masterclass by Fortunato Valente, a director and editor from Calabria, with the aim of teaching 15 less experienced participants the rudiments of the DaVinci Resolve program and how to turn a series of clips into a properly exported audiovisual product. Fortunato showed how to work on timelines, cut and expand clips, the most commonly used transitions and some shortcuts to achieve a more narratively interesting product.

The last workshop, attended by 25 people, was “Sound Editing,” where tutor Cecilia Keirstead talked about audio post-production, mixing techniques, and managing recorded dialogue tracks, sound effects and music, combining theoretical notions with practical examples.

Between the two training sessions, the Amantea Popular Casting was held, an important meeting with our community in which aspiring local actors took turns presenting themselves in front of the directors. In fact, each year, we give people from Amantea the opportunity to participate in films produced during the residency as actors, thus experiencing the set and making connections with international artists.

This year, 20 people between the ages of 7 and 70 participated, including those who had already been involved in some of the films of past editions and those who wanted to try this experience for the first time.

The planned activities of the residency closed on June 13 with the Pitching session, which took place in the morning at the Terrenito. The function of the event is to allow filmmakers to pitch the idea of the short film they want to shoot, and to find people in any necessary roles who want to collaborate.

Each participant had two minutes to present their idea, through a brief synopsis, the genre of the film, what roles are needed, and how many days of shooting are planned.

In the afternoon, Amantea celebrated the annual patronal feast in honor of St. Antonio da Padova, which ended with the traditional procession of the statue through the streets of the historic center. In addition to the opportunity to shoot some impactful audio and video footage, participants had the chance to witness and participate in a religious and community event belonging to our culture.

Procesion_205_Kino June 2024_Sergio G Durre

Procesion_083_Kino June 2024_Sergio G Durre

THE FILMING PROCESS

Participants formed teams independently for their projects, either during the process at the training activities organized by us or at more unstructured times. Following the philosophy of the Kino method, we did not interfere in this process, letting collaborations arise organically and spontaneously.

Our organization provided basic sound recording equipment, lights, reflectors and tripods, which were shared by the participants in a collaborative approach. The residency mentors did not take over their roles, but gave advice and guidance to the along the way.

Filming took place in different locations in Amantea, touching on the historic center explored during the tour, the ruins of the tower and St. Francis Church, the beach, the fish and farmers market, the cloister of St. Bernardino, and the homes and stores of Amanteans for the indoor scenes.

During the pitching event, we hosted Cristina Rambaldi, an actress, writer and film producer who is the granddaughter of Carlo Rambaldi, a two-time Academy Award-winning special effects artist who worked on films such as E.T. and King Kong.

During the residency, she was involved in the shooting of a film directed by Sohail Dahdal, a Palestinian by birth but resident of the United Arab Emirates, where he is a professor of Media Communication and Journalism at the American University of Sharjah. The director shot his project “With Love From Gaza” in Amantea, involving local actors, to tell a story inspired by his war experiences.

THE FILMING PROCESS

THE FINAL SCREENING

The final evening of the residency was held at the Terrenito in Amantea on June 21. The event was preceded by the last training event for participants, the Distribution Masterclass conducted by Mark Brennan, Festival Strategist and Festival Liaison for the British agency Festival Formula.

The final screening was held in front of 150 spectators, including several children who had the opportunity to see themselves on the big screen and share this experience with friends and families.

THE PARTICIPANTS

Kino Guarimba’s selection process is carried out with the goal of creating a diverse community in terms of age, profiles, geographical and cultural backgrounds, but united by the desire to share experiences, knowledge and spaces to create together.

In the months leading up to the residency, we carried out differentiated promotional work, integrating multiple tools and channels. We sent promotional emails to international film schools to include the residency in newsletters addressed to students. We were guests at UCLA in Los Angeles, and Universidad de Antioquia and Universidad Catolica Luis Amigó in Medellín to meet directly with students. We talked about the project during our missions to the festival markets where we were guests, such as Clermont-Ferrand, Winterthur, and Encounters, with which we organized appointments with representatives of film institutes around the world. Finally, we organized targeted social media campaigns and coordinated promotions with our partners.

The result of this whole process was the selection of 50 artists from 28 different countries, representing all continents: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, England, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, the Netherlands, Palestine, Romania, Serbia, Singapore, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Ukraine, and the USA.

This edition was the most diverse in terms of nationalities: we hosted artists from countries that had never been represented at the Kino before, such as Singapore, Palestine, Tanzania, and Japan. Thanks to the promotion organized together with our partners, we managed to have the presence of 6 Colombian, 5 Finnish and 5 Taiwanese participants.

For the first time in the history of Kino Guarimba, participants of European origin were less than half the total. This is a very important and significant achievement that testifies to the growth of the project and its international visibility.

PARTICIPANTS PER CONTINENT (NATIONALITY)

At the gender level, we hosted 29 women, 20 men and one non-binary person, confirming the trend of having a female majority in all the last five editions.

The average age of participants was 28 and a half years, with a median of 27. The most represented age group, as was the case in 2023, was 25-30 years old (19 people), followed by the youngest group of 18-25 years old (16 people).

The selection process also took into consideration the heterogeneity of profiles and roles. Both film students and professionals with established careers participated, as the residency was structured in such a way as to provide space for different learning processes, both for those who are taking their first steps in the audiovisual world and for those who want to get away from the stress of the production dynamics of large sets and experience creative and community immersion.

Filmmakers make up a significant percentage of the participants, but the residency’s training activities allowed everyone to experience different roles.

THE SCHOLARSHIPS

For the June edition, we awarded 7 scholarships to participants from Asia and Latin America thanks to the collaboration with our partners.

This practice aims to make it economically viable for participants from more distant countries to participate in the project, and increase the cultural heterogeneity of our community.

The first scholarship was awarded by Residencia ACAMPADOC, one of our partner organizations in Panama. The agreement provides for an exchange of participants between the projects, with the annual awarding of one scholarship of a participant from Kino Guarimba to produce and shoot a documentary in Panama, and one scholarship of a participant from Residencia ACAMPADOC to participate in our training program in Calabria.

This year, the scholarship was awarded to Brazilian documentary filmmaker Helena Azevedo de Castro, who shot her short documentary film on the fishing tradition in Calabria.

The second fellowship was awarded to Jolinna Ang Sokkun director of photography of the film Love At Fifty, winner of the Best Short Film Award in the Third Edition of Pramana Asian Film Festival, a partner of the project. Jolinna, hailing from Singapore, has handled the cinematography of several projects, putting herself out there and working with people from all over the world.

THE TAIWANESE REPRESENTATION

Huang Shih Jia (editor), Yang Chih Chun (actress), Han Jei (actress and director), Li Yu Jie (actress) and Chang Chun Yu (director) are the artists who participated in the ninth edition of Kino Guarimba thanks to the important collaboration with the Ministry of Culture in Taiwan and the Taipei Representative Office in Italy, which covered all their travel, accommodation and participation expenses.

Through this partnership, we were able to offer them an international training opportunity, which led to meeting new cultures, developing personal projects and learning the training content of the residency, while lowering their travel and participation costs.

From our perspective, it was an opportunity to include in our program artists from a country underrepresented in Europe, which is going through a process of developing its film industry, bringing fresh ideas and an alternative perspective.

All the Taiwanese female directors directed their own short film, and worked in different roles in at least four different sets each.

On June 13, we met for dinner with Jessica Mei-jung Teng, Director of the Cultural Division of the Taipei Representative Office in Italy, and hosted a dinner together with the Taiwanese participants at Tipiko Restaurant in Amantea.

The next day, the Taipei delegation visited the spaces of La Guarimba, where we discussed the collaboration and its media impact.

2. Taiwan Terrenito_066_Kino June 2024_Sergio G Durre-2

THE IMPACT OF THE PROJECT

In the evaluation and monitoring processes of the Kino Guarimba residency, built over nine years of trial-and-error experience and experience, we aim to understand and illustrate to the public the role the project concretely takes in the development of the participants and the Amantea community.

Although some of these outcomes are extremely difficult to quantify or verbalize, we have collected and analyzed quantitative and qualitative data through questionnaires, forms and observations. The data obtained allowed us to identify the impact of the project on several levels: educational, for the international artists who participated in the residency; social, cultural and economic, for the Amantea community.

THE EDUCATIONAL IMPACT ON THE PARTICIPANTS

Kino Guarimba is constructed as an intense educational journey, concentrated in 12 days, but with a precise educational identity and pedagogical goals inspired by the theories of Non-Formal Education of Cooperative Learning and the Montessori School. The method is based on the construction of activities and that encourage the sharing of resources and spaces, independence in the creative process and the search for creative solutions to obstacles.

The selection of the residency participants is done with the aim of differentiating as much as possible the profiles and motivations, which can be very different: those who want to try their hand at directing for the first time, those who intend to experiment in the field with what they are learning during their studies, those who want to find their creative space and get away from the routine of a structured job, and those who want to live a community experience in Southern Italy.

A very important goal of the project is to harmoniously integrate the motivations and personal paths of people who are different from so many points of view, and use these differences as leverage and not as obstacles, to learn from each other and help each other in their paths.

The participants arrive in Amantea on the same day, and meet for the first time in unstructured settings such as over dinner, or in the apartments they are staying in. Before talking about their projects, we facilitate their personal connection and knowledge, reiterating the importance of working together with people with whom they are comfortable.

The stated goal of the residency is not to make masterpieces or optimize activities to build expendable products on the festival market. Rather, it is about letting one’s creativity emerge, learning to collaborate, experimenting with new roles and making mistakes, and look at failure as part of a learning journey. The residency mentors have taken on the task of guiding the participants along this path, without interfering with their personal process.

THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL IMPACT ON THE COMMUNITY

The ninth edition of the residency took place entirely in Amantea (CS), a small town of 14,000 people on the Tyrrhenian coast of Calabria, Southern Italy. Fifty international participants came into contact with local people, places and stories, transforming the streets, squares, historic center and beaches into a large open-air set, and directly and actively involving Amanteans in the making of the short films in a participatory and empowering way. The Residency was not held as an elitist event where participants live in isolation from the host context, but pushes them to explore people, places and stories of our community. This leads to the creation of deep relationships between young international artists and the residents of Amantea.

During the days of the Kino, Amantea experiences an important process of urban revitalization, which differs from gentrification interventions because it does not involve costs or generate permanent changes in the physical structure of places, but transforms their perception in the eyes of the community and outside. This process occurred when crews worked in isolated, abandoned or degraded locations, making them the protagonists of a new narrative, or totally changed their function, giving them new meanings.

These processes, which are difficult to quantify, have a significant impact on the social and cultural capital of the area, re-establishing a connection between culture and people and creating a sense of belonging and pride in the local community. The people of Amantea have the opportunity to see their town and their stories represented on the big screen, giving visibility and value to their cultural heritage. The Kino Guarimba, every year, succeeds in telling through art the genius loci of Amantea and Calabria, a tale that stems from a collective gaze and unites local and global dimensions.

Increasing the social and cultural capital of people from Amantea also happens through the promotion of cultural diversity within a community that we are familiarizing, each year, with the presence of artists from around the world. Community members share their daily spaces for 12 days with artists from around the world, and interact with them at various times. They directly attend the filming, which takes place in bars, squares, beaches, and apartments, but most importantly they participate in the films as actors, and tell the stories in the many documentaries that are made during the Kino each year.

Among the many examples, we can mention Hungarian director Kata Incze, who brought in one of the marching bands of Amantea to film a scene on the beach, also involving four local actors she met during popular casting.

Algerian-Italian director Mounir Derbal also cast five small Amantean actors, who recited litanies and folk songs that were then sampled by Finnish sound engineer Tommi Vieno and Colombian editor Santiago Calle García: a film about memory and the abandonment of places, with filming at different points in the historic center.

THE ECONIMIC IMPACT ON THE TERRITORY

The budget for the ninth edition of the Kino Guarimba was €60,000, invested in the area with the purchase of locally produced gadgets, the organization of dinner and lunch for participants, the rental of apartments for 60 people and 12 nights, compensation for the Calabrian project collaborators from Reggio Calabria, Amantea and Vibo Valentia and, all meals for the team, materials used for the execution of the events, and general office expenses.

In addition to the direct induced impact, we estimated the indirect impact of the residency on the economic fabric of Amantea through a survey we sent to participants at the end of the residency. This impact is even more visible in the context of Amantea during the month of June, still far from the massive presence of tourists as in the months of August, but with beach facilities and tourism-related activities already in operation. During the days of the residency, we saw participants filling spaces such as Lido Azzurro, to work during the day and have lunch, or pubs such as Cantina Amarcord, to get together after they finished filming and drink together. The Latin American restaurant Caracas Bistrot, which had organized a dinner event with Venezuelan chef Sumito Estevez, filled 20 seats during the evening with only Kino participants.

The survey allowed us to estimate the average spending of each guest participant during the twelve-day stay, referring to the purchase of food, drinks, and other expenses such as souvenirs and props within Amantea businesses. The result was an average expenditure of €400 per participant over the twelve-day period, bringing a total impact of €20,000.

The project is capable of generating important multiplier effects for the area, that is, revenue generated beyond the event itself. These effects have proven to be able to strengthen the image of the area, attract sustainable tourism and new investment, becoming as an example of experiential storytelling of an authentic Calabria, different from the consumerist approach of traditional beach tourism, and capable of telling and rediscovering the traditions, history and culture of an area with so much to offer.