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6/25/2020 - 66th TaorminaFilmFest On July 19th the closing ceremony at the Ancient Theater. Il etait un petit navire, the witness film by Marion Hansel, the opening title
The 66th TaorminaFilmFest - produced and organized by Videobank SpA, courtesy of the Taormina Arte Sicilia Foundation - will debut on 11 July and, for eight days, will land mainly online on MYmovies while the 12 twelve titles of the main competitive category, destined for first works and second, they will be the protagonists of the screenings in the hall at the Palazzo dei Congressi in Taormina, with free admission and by reservation. The festival, directed by Leo Gullotta and with the selection curated by Francesco Calogero, promptly reinvented itself also in the face of a health emergency and, while respecting the protocols and precautionary measures, on July 19th it will turn the lights of the great cinema on again in that suggestive thousand-year-old natural setting that is the Ancient Theater, for the occasion again usable and used for entertainment events albeit in an unusual scenographic guise. The closing ceremony of the edition, with the participation of the Sicilian Symphony Orchestra, will feature the winners of the Competition, with the delivery of the traditional Charybdis and Polyphemus Masks awards as well as the Taormina Arte Awards for their career. And exceptionally it will be the artistic director Leo Gullotta to accompany the loyal audience of the event both on the occasion of the evening and in the path of a daily format, intended for the web and streaming, which will lead the viewer home on an ideal journey through documents videos, unreleased archive images and guest interventions, which will tell about yesterday's festival and today's innovative and partially virtual festival. The opening title of the sixty-sixth edition will therefore be the Italian preview of "Il était un petit navire" (There Was A Little Ship): Marion Hänsel's testament film is the homage that Taormina and its international film festival want return to the filmography of four decades of the Belgian producer, director and actress after the recent death. And to do so is a diary of memories of life and cinema - between Marseille, Antwerp, Paris, New York and Flanders - very close to the self-reflective films of Agnès Varda and Chantal Akerman. A filmic-biographical essay, sincere and poetic.