“The intuitions must be visualized, understood, transported to the real level and declined according to time. We must have the strength and the desire to destroy and rebuild. You need to travel, train, learn and then return to your own country to give back what you have been given". More than a masterclass, the director of Giffoni Opportunity, Claudio Gubitosi, gave his honest insight, eye to eye albeit through a webcam, to the jurors of Giffoni Macedonia Youth Film Festival.
The eighth edition of the event follows the path already undertaken by #Giffoni50: with a jury composed of over 200 children divided into three categories - juniors (from 10 to 14 years), cadets (from 14 to 16 years) and seniors (from 16 to 19 years) – joined by Macedonian and foreign hubs. Following the webinar of director Gubitosi, in fact, together with the 15 Italian jurors present in Multimedia Valley, were also 60 young people called to represent the delegations of Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, Serbia, Romania, Croatia, Spain, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan.
The initiative is co-financed by the National Cinema Agency of North Macedonia, for Italy by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities - Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisual, by the Macedonian Department of Culture, supported by the Embassy of Italy in Skopje and organized by Giffoni Opportunity together with the Planet M.
"An idea cannot be a game but an expression of one's personality - continues Gubitosi - I have given 50 years of my life to this intuition and, in return, I have received much satisfaction. I was more or less 17 when I organized the first edition of the festival. At that age the expectations are gigantic: you go beyond any kind of logic. I wanted to do something important that I liked first of all and, today, I am proud even if not yet satisfied. This year Giffoni celebrates 50 years but there is still a lot to do: our history is the past, what we are building instead is the present and the future of the idea".
Iskra, Milena, Bisarha, Sofia and Jubiza are just some of the jurors who took part, highlighting curiosity, reflections and telling their experience in Giffoni. And someone also took the opportunity to ask for advice on how to achieve success.
"I did not study Giffoni, it was born over time and has developed edition after edition - he replies - hundreds of thousands of young people have found, in this small town, the place to get to know each other, appreciate the beauty of different cultures, true friendships., the strength of acceptance and diversity, express oneself freely, be listened to, be able to interact with everyone without distinction. Oscar and Nobel prizes, politicians, scientists, writers, poets, authorities of all levels: here children have the opportunity to meet those beautiful people who can, even with just a word, open new horizons".
And then the advice: “To achieve success you need to have clear ideas. Organization is a science, nothing is by chance. The construction of a project is a complicated thing and for which you need passion and desire to grow. This is not to say not to feel fear. Giffoni is part of my life, if make mistakes I destroy the identity of an idea that is loved and known all over the world. If I lose sight of objectives and strategies, I put the economy of the whole area in crisis, of my region which has the leadership in the world in this sector and also of those who work with me. Fear is part of the human race, woe to those who feel strong. You can imagine how many meetings I have held in all the universities of the world: every time I prepare my notes, study, analyze, write, then I almost never read them. Fear is a protection: it is that force that pushes us to balance equals and opposites”.
And to those who ask him what prompted him to give life to Giffoni he replies: “It is a mystery, an unsolved question in my life. George Washington University took me under pressure for two years to understand the origin of Giffoni, even today there is no answer. To understand what has happened to me, you have to leave aside the world of dreams and enter another: that of intuitions. At the time, a provincial boy who had great ambitions to grow and travel could only do so with his imagination, with cinema. Insights can come to everyone, they must be accepted and understood. There is no calendar of ideas, you have to be good at understanding the time where something was born within you".
The closing ceremony of Giffoni Macedonia is scheduled for tomorrow, Wednesday 30 September, when the winning films will be announced and the works made by the young people during the creative workshops will be presented.
