The Florence International Film Festival second year!!!!

Still exhausted over the magnitude of the The second Annual Florence Film Festival I am at last relaxing at Fids and reviewing our ...well success. We had loads of help! First of all the Tuscan Film Ccmmission was wonderful! They got us great press and helped tranform the Odeon Theater into an elegant restauran with the red carpet glamour of Cannes They also put up with our passionate students, energetic actors, endless rehershals a major hollywood style casting calls and thanks to lisa permission to actually film in Palazzio Vechio. Also thanks to Allessandro Ricoli who aided his wonderful artistic touch and mideval costumes!

The food was excellent and endless. We actually had to call the crowds back into the threatre to see the movies.

We had two film shorts filmed here in Florence which was grand not only because the quality was exceptional for being on a limited budget but it really created a community spirit and the promise of more great films filmed in our fabulous tuscan enviroment with a story at everyturn to be shown in future festivals.

We also had a terrific selection of internantional films and started the entire program off with a tribute to Menucci by the famous director CarloU. Quintererio who was great fun sharing with us his clips and stories from old Hollyood and cine citta'

The

A Happy New Year for The Florence International Film Festival

I would like to take a moment to thank everyone who so generously gave of themselves , their time and their talents to make this year's first Florence International Film Festival a great scuccess! Thanks to our wonderful sponsors, volunteers, The Tuscan Film Commission the folks at the Odeon Theatre and the film makers who sent in just wonderful fresh and new films creating a new platform for the films and new media of the future.
We filmed a nice panel disccusion on the future of film and will post that asap!

Notes to Heaven

It is quite rare but a very joyous occasion when you have moments in your life when you feel everything pulls together physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. The filming of Notes to Heaven was one such beautiful moment for me. I could see my vision of The Florence Film School and the Infinite Human Production company coming together and touching both myself in a deeply personal way, my students, the international community of Florence and through the electronic media eventually the world. It is also wonderful because we will be able to show it to the community as a special edition at The Florence International Film Festival.

I have already received several comments and blogs about the event but I would like to talk about it personally. As I wrote my final note to Peter I thought it would be much easier but I was so filled with emotion and found it so hard to say good bye. Francesca the Director had wanted to film one final balloon after the mass rush of balloons to follow with the camera so I told her it could be mind. But I really wanted to hang on as long as possible. After the amazing flurry of balloons whooshed through the city, I let mine go. I was amazed at the speed it pick up, my note acting like a propeller. It was gone! Out of my sight so fast we didn't even get it on camera! I guess I had been needing to let go of that note for quite some time.

That night I kept thinking about my note and where it had ended up. I hoped not on the windshield of some tourist driving through Tuscany but in the arms of Peter's great Soul!

Notes to Heaven

One in a while a student comes along your path who truly moves you. It's like your souls have been waiting to be touched at the same time you are afraid of the encounter because you know it will change you forever. This has been my experience will all of my students at The Florence Film School who undoubtedly has touched me in the most deeply profound way.

She came to the course wanting to do a documentary on death and how people deal with it. She formulated it into a series of interviews that would lead to an event in Santa Spirito where these selected subjects would write a letter, presumably a good bye letter to the person with whom they had been with and was no more. Then attached them to red balloons and send then upwards spiraling towards the heavens.
The story was called "Notes To Heaven" and she asked me to take part in it, which by the way I never ever take part in my students films.

Well, I just knew I had to this. This was Peter's way of helping me let go of him and move on with my life. I realized that I had never even participated in a funeral or service for him. I had just refused to let go! As I began writing this letter I had never felt so much pain, pain every where in my body but especially my heart I cried almost every day all day and I kept wondering if I was going to make it though this. My God the truth is I really didn't want to live on with out Peter.

Well tomorrow we release the balloons in Santa Spirito. So I will let you know how I feel after this great event. It is at 2:00 P.M. It is open to anyone that wants to send a note up to heaven.
Elizabeth Monroy
Florence Film School

Tuscan History gets Spiked!

Tuesday September 29^th I attended the press conference here in Florence at Palazzo Stozzi. It was a stimulating event where the community of Tuscany had the opportunity to comment on the James McBride and Spike Lees’ very controversial interpretation of what historically occurred here in Tuscany during the second world war.

As the James McBride the Author of the book The Miracle of Santa Anna so eloquently put it was a fictional story set in the historical background of the The second World War played out in Tuscany. It was about the relationships between Afro American soldiers or Buffalo soldiers and the other groups of people they encountered, The white American soldiers, Germans, Italian patricians and the common villagers who were caught up in the cruelty of War.

Writers and Directors often take liberties to tell a story that is free from stereotypes and has a fresh original angle . In this story there was a good German, bad American officers, divided villagers and a partisan who played the villain. Not even the black American soldiers themselves were black and white characters.

This is a common approach for writers to create deep and rich stories filled with three dimensional characters. What is uncommon and was done by both the writer and the director was to listen to the concerns of the community they had offended in their manner of telling this fictional story.

As a writer and Director I felt is was a powerful moment in history to see a community hold artist’s responsible for their creative work and to see the artists step up to the plate to defend their work.

How responsible are we as writers and film makers to accurately recount historical facts? Certainly Disney or Touch Tone Studios has been notorious for rewriting history. What exactly is history? It goes back to the old saying five people witness an accident and everyone has a different version of what they saw.

Whether we like it or not as artist’s writers, painters, film makers our depiction of history will most likely be the version that is most identified by future generations since the oral traditions of storytelling have been replaced with Art and Entertainment. The Last Supper by Da Vinci will be most people’s visual image of that famous evening dinner. Just as Dante will be thought of as walking around with a red cape and laurels..

How responsible are we as artists to history? Would it be better to rewrite history changing the past as we change the future? Should we pretend the holocaust never existed and make up a happy history?

Should art be used dig up old wounds?

Or can is be a way to learn from our mistakes and heal the past, finally putting it behind us a creating something new?

History Repeats itself is the catch phase. But do we have to keep repeating these terrible mis-takes? Can we edit out the bad scenes reshoot them and change our future at long last?

When we made Eve olution it was a very difficult film to make. I had to come face to face with how much women had suffered. Over 5 million women were killed in a holocaust called the Inquisition. These facts are rarely is heard of.. When I visited a torture exhibition in Prague most of the instruments had been designed and used on women.

The tragedy of Santa Anna is now known to a much larger population thanks to Spike Lee and James Mcbride and maybe the first step to putting the past behind us is to face, it grieve it, learn from it and then move on. This is the healing power of film. I feel Spielberg did that with Schindler’s List although I am sure every good story teller takes some poetic license to tell a good story.

Spike’s agenda was, as always to show the Afro American perspective of the injustice of racism. He made a powerful comment at the press conference about ending the injustices of society racism , sexism and his film was meant to highlight that issue. I commend him as a film maker who has a moral responsibility and has had the courage to follow his mission despite criticism. He has been a pioneer in the Art and Craft of Film and a voice for a people who have not been justly treated or recognized.

I have a good friend who was a Tuskegee Airmen, and finally On 29 March 2007, about 350 Tuskegee Airmen and their widows were collectively awarded the Congressional Gold Medal presented by President Bush for his heroic acts in World War II. This was after a HBO aired The Tuskegee Airmen (1996) starring Laurence Fishburne .

So as the Director of The Florence Film School I say unto you : you can and must influence our social memory of history in a positive way helping future generations to learn from the past and pay recognition to those who may not have a voice in a society that has lost it’s perspective and morals.