17/04/2023
Believes in the cohabitation of the two cities and in the film community Giuseppe Longo, director of Transmedia, the company that manages the Kinemax in Gorizia and Monfalcone, and organisational director of the Sergio Amidei Cultural Association, which organises the homonymous film festival in Gorizia focusing on the best screenplays and an integral part of the Cinecittà - Mesto filma project of the ECOC programme. He is the kind of person who welcomes you with good news. He and the director of the Goriški muzej agreed to put a plaque on the museum building of Villa Bartolomei in Solkan indicating that the mother of the famous Italian screenwriter Sergio Amidei, one of the main creators of neo-realism in film art, was born here. Rather than talking about himself, Longo talks about Amidei and the film critic Darko Bratina and his friends and colleagues, Boris Peric, Igor Prinčič and the late Aleš Doktorič, who laid the cinematic foundations in Gorizia decades ago. He shows us the voluminous monograph on Amidei that he and his colleagues prepared 20 years ago. He was introduced to the world of cinema in 1991 by Rodolfo Ziberna, then Councillor for Culture and now Mayor of Gorizia. He asked him to take charge of the organisation of the Sergio Amidei film festival, conceived by Darko Bratina. Today, it is an internationally renowned festival that has been visited by many famous directors over the past 32 years, including Ken Loach, Abbas Kiarostami, Margarethe Von Trotta, Asghar Farhadi, Wim Wenders, Otar Iosseliani, etc. Longo accompanied each of them to Transalpina Square, a magical place for him, and photographed them. He tells us that they enjoyed their stay with us because they could discover other worlds. Worlds of different languages, dialects, histories, ideologies, landscapes. Giuseppe Longo, a Gorizian whose parents moved from Calabria, believes in the conurbation of the two Goricas, in its immense heritage and in the opportunity offered by the European Capital of Culture. He is convinced that this opportunity will improve us and that it will bring together all the hitherto isolated activities of institutions and individuals from the world of cinema into one strong and incisive team that will be able to distinguish itself on a European level. The meeting of all Italian filmmakers (cinema d'essais), which Longo will bring from the traditional venue of Mantua to Gorizia in 2025, will play an important role in this respect. Longo is certain that his Italian colleagues will also be joined by Slovenian colleagues, and that this will mark the beginning of something important.
