“Effervescent” Cortisonici are coming. Will this be the last edition?

Cortisonici is ten years old and is coming back for an "effervescent" edition. An adjective that describes well the five days of the short film festival of Varese, for several reasons. The first is that the playbill of this year shows a man who is taking a cortison-based pill accompanied by the message" to use without any precaution". A theme that brings us to the origins, to the very first edition of the festival, when it " was given with pills". Another thing is that ten years are an important landmark. The third is that this year " Cortisonici" will close the edition with a question mark: will this be the last? Not having any answers creates sadness and uncertainty, but Cortisonici has to be lived with the whole energy and " effervescence" that it deserves.

 

The edition will start on Tuesday, 19th March and until the 23rd it will bring to Varese short films from all over the world, a reduced programme, compared to the past years ( there won’t be two sections: Lab e VideoClip) but it will however be rich and interesting . There was the all staff who presented it during a press conference and they reminded the economic difficulties met to organise this edition and they spoke about the uncertainty for the future, despite, what the councillor Longhini has reminded, " Cortisonici is one of the most interesting and long-lived manifestations of the territory. It attracts the attention of a lot of people, also from outside and we are happy to support it also this year."  The municipal administration places the spaces a disposal and free and gives a contribution of € 5,400, a reduced figure according to the past years. In fact, in front of a necessary budget of almost €20,000 , today the festival has been organised with only € 7 thousand and the future remains uncertain. " This year a circle is going to close," explains Massimo Lazzaroni artistic director of the festival. They have been 10 years of hard work but that gave us great satisfaction. We believe to leave to the city a very significant product and we see what will happen. It would be great to unite forces, with other festivals that are realised in the city and create a Giffoni Festival of Varese, why not? Today we are the window of the cinema of tomorrow .

THE FESTIVAL

In fact, the international share is evident. This year, the staff of Cortisonici, recieved 400 projects from all over the world, included Kosovo. Among all, 18 works coming from Russia, Canada, Greece, Belgium, Spain, U.S.A., France, Italy have been chosen and will be presented on Thursday 21^st , Friday 22^nd , and Saturday 23^rd of March (three juries: audience, youth – discover how to participate – quality with Traini – Stellacci – Smeraglia). Lazzaroni explains: “we’ve made a really hard work chosing the shorts in competition, the quality is always higher. So we decided to dedicate a soirée to the shorts which have been excluded from the contest, but that are however very good (Tuesday 19^th of March, at 21:00).”

The festival will take place on Saturday 16^th March with the Youth Section and a series of workshops and meetings that, this year, will involve even the Re Mida area. The competition will start from Monday 18^th and even this section has seen a great participation. 200 works come from schools all over Italy, even from Varese. Four prizes at stake: the Unicef one for the human rights themes, the Aspem one for environmental themes, the audience one and the Varese’s magazine Cinequanon.it one. As the organizers explain, the Youth Section operation even created the collaboration between schools: Students coming from afar will be hosted by Varese students families. Then, it cannot be missing the hot section of the festival, or the Inferno (the Hell, ndt.), where it is possible to find some real delicacies and everything will be a surprise. The “cortisonic” aperitif that will officially inaugurate the festival will take place on Tuesday 19^th March at the Twiggy Caffè. Moreover, the focus On Swiss organised with TSI should not be forgotten.