November 20 is a special day: around the world – It’s International Childhood and Adolescence day which celebrates its 28th anniversary. Giffoni Experience - always close to the youth of every ethnicity, religion, social and personal condition - has chosen to celebrate this very important date with 4,000 children aged 13 to 18 who are participating from today and until Saturday 25 November, to the 2017 edition of Giffoni Albania. An event, founded in 2005, which brings together in the cities of Tirana, Durres and Scutari a total of 9,000 young people called to evaluate a selection of the best works in competition in the past editions of the Giffoni Film Festival, and which also offers participants the in-depth studies as a master and panel promoted by the Tirana University of Arts and the Association of Filmmakers.
"The children of Giffoni Albania are pleased and enthusiastic - says the director of Giffoni Experience Claudio Gubitosi, today in Tirana - as soon as we arrived we saw these young ladies wearing Giffoni t-shirts with joy. This year we complete a very complex journey and, with this edition of Giffoni Albania, we also close in part the international activities 2017, preparing us for the great challenge of the Giffoni 2018/2020 trilogy. "An annual event that also represents film and social progress, as Niko Ajazi, festival coordinator explains, "We have traveled almost all of Albania over the past 12 years and involved all the cities in the country - says Ajazi - there are more than 35,000 young people who have participated in past editions. This year, however, is really important: for the first time we have also included 4 Albanian movies, and we look forward to discovering how this democratic and young jury will evaluate them. For 30 years, Albania has not produced films for children, and for this reason, Giffoni has been good for all of us, for cinema and for the future".
The International Day of Childhood was born in 1989, when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the UN Convention on the Rights of children and youth. Ratified by over 190 countries around the world, it was introduced in Italy in 1991. Of these 190 countries, Giffoni Experience welcomes every year over 52, in the form of jurors from all over the world. Even today, unfortunately, many children and adolescents - coming from conflicting or developing countries as well as from socially and economically developed realities like ours - are victims of violence, abuse, injustice or discrimination and marginalized. Too many, however, live in serious neglect. Worldwide, 385 million children live in extreme poverty (Unicef data): every day, 15,000 children under the age of 5 die. Every five minutes, however, a child or young woman dies. Unfortunately, this happens because women and children are sensitive targets in war, and are involved in ethnic cleansing and often forced to enroll themselves into becoming "child soldiers."
It is for these reasons that an UN Convention is required: consisting of 54 articles and divided into three parts, it is based on four general principles, valid for children all over the world. Non-discriminating, without any social, religious, cultural or personal distinction, and applies to every child; The interest of children and young people is considered to be paramount and priority; Every child is entitled not only to life, but also to survival and development; finally participation and respect for every child's opinion. The last point is one of the hubs on which Giffoni Experience has developed: every child and teenager has the right to be heard so that their opinion is taken into account.
