Siff 2014 | 11th Edition

SIFF was born in 2004 in Tricase, in Salento, the “Gateway to the East”: a land that has always represented a melting pot of cultures and traditions from East to West, thanks to the different civilizations that have lived and left a mark on the culture of this region. An event that gives prestige to the City of Tricase, in great cultural ferment in the month of June thanks also to the filming of the new film by director Tonino Zangardi, starring Claudia Gerini and Marco Bocci.

Tricase, a town in flux and home to the SIFF, a festival that has been active for 11 years, and with a very rich program that will take place this year for 9 days, from 21st to 28th June, rather than in the traditional month of September. The main venues of the event are the Cinema Paradiso and the Cinema Aurora in Tricase. For the first time SIFF leaves the squares and enters cinemas to offer its audience greater cinematographic quality, while maintaining free entry as SIFF remains firm in its desire to allow free enjoyment of an opportunity to encounter cinema and culture, engines of progress and well-being.

Among the new features of the eleventh edition, in addition to the change in dates, is a small review of the new contemporary cinema of Hong Kong. In review, the tense and gripping crime thriller “Fire of Conscience”, an electrifying example of entertaining urban noir that nails you to your seat with a continuous succession of thrilling scenes. The other film in review is “Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Magic Flame” by director Tsui Hark, the Spielberg of Hong Kong, applauded at the 2010 Venice Film Festival where it was in competition, starring Andy Lau, Tony Leung Ka Fai and Bingbing Li. The film is a hymn to the visionary phantasmagoria of cinema. An invitation to “wonder” and amazement.

This year we are delighted to introduce a small section of the Festival dedicated to the little ones: “Il Cinema dei Piccoli” – a festival aimed at children aged 5 and up. The aim is to spread and promote quality cinema among young people of school age, spectators of tomorrow, but above all, a significant segment of the public. The intent is therefore to develop the dual value of Cinema: that relating to its collective mode of enjoyment which helps socialisation, and that relating to a prerogative of the cinematographic medium to transmit “positive” messages through quality films. On display, among other things, the award-winning Japanese “cartoon” directed by Mamoru Hosada, winner of numerous awards and acclaimed by international critics and a masterpiece for the whole family.