30. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
23 August - 1 September 2024

The Argonautica by Apollonius Rhodius, the story of the enterprise of the hero Jason in search of the Golden Fleece in the mysterious lands of Colchis, is one of the most famous Greek epics. The actors and theatre educators Alessandro Argnani and Emanuele Valenti lead a group of young people in the staging of the opera. The boys come from San Chirico Raparo, a village of shepherds and farmers perched on the plateaus of the Basilicata region and a place of progressive depopulation. A thousand inhabitants still resist, among them twelve African boys. They too participate in the representation of the journey, its difficulties and sufferings. The journey is the dimension that weaves a thread between the different identities: that of the Argonauts, sea travellers sung by poets; that of the inhabitants of San Chirico, almost all emigrated in the forties and only returned in old age; and finally the journey of the new migrants.

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  Alessandro Penta

  Born in Modena, Penta lives and works in Milan. He makes narrative documentaries and uses video for educational projects. He collaborates with such social realities as Olinda Onlus, within the ex-psychiatric hospital Paolo Pini and with Asnada (Experimental School of Italian for foreigners). He made the films ViaIppocrate45, in which he told of the transformation of the ex-psychiatric hospital, and Effetto Thioro, in which he recounts the first trip to Senegal by a child born to a mixed-race couple.