We have reached the 7th edition of Tekfestival, “Ai confini del mondo...dentro l’Occidente” (On the Borders of the World…Inside the West).

The 7th edition of Tekfestival will take place in two different movie theaters in Rome: the Cinema Farnese and the Cinema Trevi, from the 6th to the 11th of May. For 6 exciting days of intense programming, it will present to the public 80 different titles.

As in the past, this year we have attempted to combine our passion for research -- based on the attendance of the most important national and international film festivals, on the establishment of relations with cultural institutes, production houses, and directors – with a willingness to offer a cinematographic interpretation of the present. Once again, the decision to organize a festival has translated into a desire to give a voice and show works and artists who usually remain outside of the realm of distribution, because not explicitly commercial. Our aim is to create a physical space, to be transformed into a mental space, in which to think freely, research in a destabilizing way, and discuss passionately.

The core of the festival will be devoted to short films and documentaries that have won prestigious awards in other countries. These are authors who have produced relevant films, but who are mostly unknown in Italy, artists who engage with new forms of communication and, in particular, with a series of questions dealing with our present: post-colonial societies, social inequalities, gender relations, sexual orientations, precariousness, the mass media, permanent warfare.

This year we have decided to open the festival with an analysis of the world of labor. While directing Strike (1924), Eisenstein experimented with several vanguard narrative devices, such as the “montage of attractions,” based on the combination through analogy of a narratated event (workers crushed down by the police) and a different event (a cow killed in a slaughterhouse). These issues present many similarities with what is happening today, although what we experience is not so much a radical clash, but a sacrifice of human beings carried out in the name of economic development and profit, entangling and strangling the lives of thousands of people. We asked ourselves what a Film Festival could do to challenge such a reality. May be very little, except to offer, as do many national and international film festivals, its “spaces of vision” to films, documentaries and short films that increasingly focus on precariousness and labor. 

The addition of a live soundtrack to Strike, by Aqui Terme’s historical music group Yo Yo Mundi, will thus inaugurate a series of short movies, among which the archival images of AAMOD, a preview of Mimmo Calopresti’s new movie on ThyssenKrupp, and a selection of shorts realized by young directors and put together by Ucca (Arci’s movie clubs), revolving around the theme of precariousness. The event is realized in collaboration with the Film Commission Torino Piemonte.

From the world of labor – and we could use the documentary Workers leaving the factory as an imaginary hyphen – we will then move to the work of Czech director, writer and thinker Harun Farocki on media and memory, to which we devote an entire Focus, realized together with the Goethe Institute and the artistic residence Quatz.

The Special Events will then lead to the section Panorami, characterized by an investigation of predominantly female characters and points of view. These films are very diverse, both in terms of their cinematographic style and of their plots, and they will leave their mark on the public: Phantom Love , directed by Nina Menkes, who has been defined by «The Los Angeles Times»  as one of the most brilliant and provocative artists of our times. Silvia: The documentary , directed by Margo Pelletier and Lisa Thomas (Usa, 2008, 90’) about Silvia Baraldini; and Vivere (Germania, 2007), by German director Angelina Maccarone, who was a greatly applauded guest of Tekfestival in 2007. With Joy Division , by Grant Gee (2007) and Celluloid # 1 by Steve Staso (Usa, 2007) we move onto the musical and artistic undeground world, to engage in an unforgettable voyage.

Besides the usual windows of “Phag off”, “Terre di ghiaccio, di fuoco e di confine,” this year our festival has a new section, titled “Pericolosamente ad Est”, which explores new terrains and frontiers of cinematographic experimentation, revealing the complex and difficult experiences of men and women who turn to Europe and leave behind their rapidly changing societies. Finally, we invite you to attend two contests, devoted to national and international documentaries. These are characterized, on the one hand, by high quality works, exhibiting films realized by directors who look at and investigate Italian reality in a particularly shrewd and explicit way; on the other hand, they present works that have been already recognized and awared abroad, focusing on the peripheries of the West or investigating different aspects of social and geographic borderlands.

This year Tekfestival has decided not to participate in the “rush to the premieres,” which – we believe -- forces the organizers of film festivals to follow the laws of the market, and prevents independent and socially engaged documentaries and films from circulating. Instead, independently from their having been shown at other festivals or not, we have chosen to present the highest number of works, selected for their particular interpretation of reality, memory, conflict and resistance.