On average, somewhere in the world, a film festival starts up every 36 hours - and that’s only counting the major ones. But Giffoni is not your average film festival, and that is what allows it to stand out from the crowd.
The Giffoni Film Festival is not the only such event to focus wholly or mainly on children’s films. But, in its 31-year history, it has done so with such passion and commitment that it has claimed a unique place on the crowded festival circuit, attracting guests of which even an A-list event like Cannes and Berlin could be proud. Among them have been Robert De Niro, Liv Ullman, Ben Kingsley, Jeremy Irons, John Travolta, Mickey Rooney and the late Anthony Quinn, together with directors of the calibre of Bernardo Bertolucci, Sergio Leone, Nikita Mikhalkov, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wenders.
| This summer, when kids around the world will be making up a large part of the movie-going
audience, there is a small town in Italy where they will be taking over completely. Sam Connolly profiles the 31-year-old Giffoni Film Festival..
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“Children remind us constantly that we can still find their way of seeing things,” said Wenders on a recent visit. “It means the child within us is still alive.”
But it was François Truffaut, attending one of the first Giffoni festivals in the early seventies, who paid the event its most impressive tribute. “Of all the cinema festivals in the world,” he wrote in a thank-you note to the organisers, “Giffoni is the most necessary.”
Japanese director Takashi Yamasaki
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Launched in 1971 by a group of cinephiles who believed that films for children and young people needed their own special showcase, the Giffoni Film Festival has one additional draw card that should not be overlooked: its location. While several other get-togethers - Locarno, San Sebastián and even Cannes - can boast beautiful natural settings, Giffoni’s is quite simply stunning: a small town on the Amalfi coast, nestling between the ruins of Pompei and the island of Capri.
Indeed, two of the Giffoni Festival’s proudest boasts are that many of its most famous guests come to the event, not to promote their latest film (which is virtually the only reason any star attends a festival these days), but for the unique atmosphere and ambiance of the event; and that, once the Festival is over, many of them stay on afterwards.
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Ratcatcher director Lynne Ramsay
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