The winning films of the second section of #Giffoni50 are three: among the feature films, the jurors chose Man Up!, directed by Benjamin Parent, as regards the short films, Luce & Me by Isabella Salvetti, while the Cial Award was given to Cam’s War, by Laura Muscardin. The founder and director of Giffoni Opportunity, Claudio Gubitosi, announced them during a conference “which is not the closure of a cycle, but just one of the many steps of a project that we have named with a slogan, Giffoni goes to great lengths, just like a friend does in times of trouble”, Gubitosi explained at the beginning, in the presence of the Under-Secretary of State for Cultural Heritage, Anna Laura Orrico, delegated by the Ministry Dario Franceschini and Paola Pisano, Minister for the Technological Innovation and Digitalisation.
While waiting for the 2021 edition of the Festival, which will happen from July 21st to July 31st, Gubitosi wanted to wish good luck to the Venice International Film Festival - which is starting on September 2nd - as a bridge between two important realities in the national and international scenario that, during the difficult months of the lockdown, kept communication alive without giving up their projects. “I was sure that Giffoni would happen in May, I still did not know how, but I never thought about abandoning my kids. During the lockdown we have been their home, everyday, through online connections, we helped them defeat loneliness”, Gubitosi said.
“One of our priorities - he added - was safety: we managed to do it using all the possible measures and I am grateful to all the families who trusted us, allowing their children to live an experience that is destined to change their life. Someone said that I have been brave, I do not think this is bravery, I think this is determination to carry out an idea, a project. The result has been fantastic”. The director of Giffoni Film Festival has then reminded everyone that, beside the jurors who were physically there, in the first two sections of the event (from August 18th to August 22nd and from August 25th to August 29th) there were more than two thousand kids from 46 hubs, 32 in Italy and 14 abroad. The organisational machine started its engines: in October many projects will start until December (From 26th to 30th) with the Festival dedicated to children and the great grandparents party.
“It is not a miracle. In a difficult time Giffoni calls and the world answers, because it is just during hardships that you can understand values. From this viewpoint, the Festival has been the first international example of rebirth from the ashes in the cultural world. Giffoni managed to create a cultural model that set a standard in the world”. The data speaks for itself. If you look up #Giffoni50, Giffoni 2020 and Giffoni Film Festival 2020 on Google, more than 5 million results come up. The websites giffonifilmfestival.it and giffonilive.it have registered more than 200,000 contacts. The same goes for social networks: the official Instagram account (@giffoni_experience) counts more than 45,000 followers. The interactions with the profile have been more than 100,000, the reached accounts are almost 70,000, the impressions almost 3 million, the posts reached almost 750,000 visualisations, with peaks for Katherine Langford (over 13,000), Serena Rossi, Ludovica Martino and Benedetta Porcaroli (almost 13,000 each), Sylvester Stallone (almost over 10,000), Paola Cortellesi, Matilde Gioli (almost 10,000) and Richard Gere (almost 9,000).
The official hashtag #Giffoni50 has been used more than two thousand times on Instagram. There have been more than 700,000 views of the Instagram stories: the trailer of Sul più bello (which Eagle Pictures has granted to the Festival’s social media two hours early) has reached a peak of fifty thousand views; the video in which Serena Rossi is singing Almeno tu nell’Universo and ‘Tanti auguri Giffoni’ has reached almost 12,000 people, while the a cappella version of Fix You by Coldplay, sung by Pinguini Tattici Nucleari has passed the 8,000 views. The official Facebook account (@GiffoniExperience), has almost reached the number of 175,000 likes and, over 10 days of the Festival, it has reached almost half a million of impressions, with more than 100,000 interactions and almost 100,000 views of the videos. Among the most engaging posts: Diego ‘Zoro’ Bianchi that reached 62,000 people, Serena Rossi, that reached almost 30,000 people, and Stay Safe, Stay Giffoni, that reached over 26,000 people.
The official Facebook page is in the top-ten of the Cinema Festivals (together with Sundance Film Festival, the Cannes Film Festival, the Venice Biennale, Tribeca, the Berlin International Film Festival, the TIFF, the Dubai International Film Festival and the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards). The social community of Giffoni has more than 270.000 followers. More than 4 thousand articles have been published online and in paper format, more than a hundred services have been broadcast on national TVs, together with regional and local media. “Italy - Gubitosi concluded - found a reference point in Giffoni. We have been a light in the dark and this happened thanks to the kids”. The Under-Secretary of State for Cultural Heritage, Anna Laura Orrico, delegated by the Ministry Dario Franceschini, said: “Giffoni is not a mere cinema festival, but the home of all the Italian people that look ahead and want to build a future. This is evidence of how culture, in such hard times, can be a source of social and economic redemption and bring hope”. Paola Pisano, Minister for the Technological Innovation and Digitalisation, was struck by “the determination of those who never gave up the idea of following their dreams”.
