Journalists take the limelight at Giffoni, with the speeches, on the second day of the Festival, of Valerio Nicolosi, journalist, director and photographer, Cecilia Sala, world correspondent with her podcast "Stories", and Francesca Milano, head of Chora Live.
From Moria camp, before and after it went up in flames, to the Mediterranean Sea, on board the NGO ships to save lives and to photograph them. From Gaza Strip to the routes of migrants fleeing wars. And, just a few months ago, in Ukraine. The journalist, filmmaker and photographer captivates, touches, encourages the giffoners from Impact! without hiding his joy for being at Giffoni: "Thank you for having me here. When I got the invitation, I immediately replied to the e-mail. It is a wonderful experience, I had never been here and it seemed like a wonderful opportunity to take". Nicolosi's stories and photographs running on the screen in the Sala Blu raise many questions mixed with reflections. Above all, the theme of dignity stands out.
"I have given myself a rule, dignity - explains the journalist - I always try not to harm the dignity of the people I am reporting on, dead or alive. I do not photograph the dead. Or, if I do, the photos stay in the archives, I don't publish them. I try to narrate people in such a way that they have dignity even when they are deprived of everything. Restoring dignity to them – he says – is the priority of my work. It is an ethical question.”
There are many stories from the field that Nicolosi shares with the visibly emotional giffoners. From rescuing lives in the open sea to help an Afghan family flee, from fire that started in the Moria camp to the experience in the Gaza Strip. This was where a project "that I care a lot about, Be filmaker in Gaza, was born. In 2014, we gathered students from the Strip, men and women together" to narrate Gaza as it is not narrated. "As a matter of fact, only war is told about Gaza, online you can only find war photos. I told the students to self-tell Gaza, to let the world know about it. I helped them, but they were telling the story." Before receiving a standing ovation from the audience and the Partenope Award, he made a plea to the giffoners: “Guys, the ball is in your hands. Before doing this job, I tried to change the model of society." Therefore, "the system must be changed from the grassroots: build disagreement, build awareness.”
The news of the present time and the near future was instead the main focus of the meeting with journalist Cecilia Sala, world correspondent with the podcast "Stories", and Francesca Milano, head of Chora Live. "Abroad I work with stories every day," says Cecilia to the boys and girls from Impact!, "there is no filter and the work is produced directly, from the ground, as happened with Ukraine. In this sense, social media are like a gateway". The approach of "Stories" is to bring listeners inside the events, with contextual elements. Sometimes the stories come out naturally, other times they need in-depth analysis, research." The guys from Impact! are an audience that is projected towards other types of fruition, amidst a liquid journalism where the infosphere surrounds them. "You have to choose who you can trust like it used to be, with authority and professionalism, in the same way," explains Cecilia Sala. "In the past you would choose a newspaper and you would trust it for its views, ideas, affinity, imagined world. Now the phenomenon directly affects journalists rather than the newspapers. The job is much more vertical, specialised. But the rules are universal, you stick them to the fields, but then you have to learn, you have to study in depth, you have to inform yourself in order to inform."
