VIDEO Mestia International Short & Mountain Film Festival - focus on Italy!

Mestia FF is now an official member of the International Alliance for Mountain Film-IAMF! A great achievement for its festival director Khatuna Khundadze who invited on this occasion to Mestia the former IAMF former coordinator Aldo Audisio and one of the biggest supporters of the festival, the Embassy of Italy. The embassy was represented by Fabiola Albanese, Deputy Head of the Mission in Georgia. 

 

Deputy Head of the Mission Fabiola Albanese,  Cultural Attache Nino Kilosanidze, Aldo Audisio and Leonardo Bizzaro 

 

To everybody's surprise Fabiola Albanese spoke in Georgian language her opening remarks at the opening ceremony on July 28, highlighting also the fact that no less than 4 Italian films have been selected. Two  short films are part of the competition: "The magic box" by Christian Antonilli and "Here where the sea shines" by Giuseppe Joey. Two mountain films are running out of competition, including "Carne et Ossa" by the Italian director Roberto Zazzara, who is one of the jury members at this year competition.

 

Roberto Zazzara in discussion with German jury member Michael Chauvistré after the screening of his film, in front of them sitting is French jury member François d'Artemarre 

 

The other film running out of competition is a masterpiece. The film was screened in Mestia on the exact day July 31 and 71 years after reaching the summit of K2. "It was Aldo's idea" Khatuna told me at our interview. The film "K2" shot in 1954 follows the journey of 12 Italian mountaneers, their goal unreachable so far, to reach the summit of "K2". Set up as a documentary, the film follows the individual journey of each one, alternating between the progress in climbing up the mountain and setting up a new camp and the live of their families back home. It is rich in suspence and in emotional moments, it can easily happen that the audience forgets it's watching "just" a documentary. 

 

 

On the 1954 Italian expedition to K2 (led by Ardito Desio), Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli became the first people to reach the summit of K2, 8,611 metres (28,251 ft), the second-highest mountain in the world. They reached the summit on 31 July 1954. K2 is more difficult to climb than Mount Everest, 8,849 metres. And they filmed themselves in 16 mm with Kodak while on the pic. This was the very first film shoot on a summit, a world premiere. 

 

After the Trento Film Festival where the world premiere of the restaurated film in Italian language took place in 2022, the film travelled to few other festivals. The English version we watched in Mestia was restaurated by the Club Alpino Italiano and is much better than the Italian one. The comments are less propaganda influenced than the in the original one in Italian explains Italian journalist Leonardo Bizzaro, invited together with Aldo to attend the premiere in Mestia.

 

While Marcello Baldi was the director, especially his DOP was very important for this project. His comments and notes were taken into account at the restauration of the film. The DOP Mario Fantin, who climbes up to the camp number 5 reaching the altitude of 6.300 m  takes us on a emotional story, showcasing remarcable determination and skill. He was shooting in 16 mm with Arriflex 16 ST.

 

The film is divided into three parts: the preparation of the expedition in Italy, the approach to the K2 base camp in Pakistan, and the climb to the summit. Baldi oversaw the filming of the sequences filmed in Italy in 35 mm while the filming in Pakistan was handled by Mario Fantin in 16 mm. The problem which occured was that they had now to find a solution to extand the 16 mm to the 35 mm. While Kodak daid it's impossible, Italian company Tecnostampa made the impossible thing possible, bought the necessary equipment for the convertion and made it possible to the surprise of Kodak. 

 

Compared to similar works created by other expeditions of the time, "K2" presents the novelty of also showing a film taken from the summit. These shots were carried out by Compagnoni and Lacedelli themselves.