In May, Malaga became the home of Italian art and culture with the sixth edition of the city’s Italian Film Festival, organized by the Societá Dante Alighieri Málaga. This event “is a commitment to bring the seventh art, as an element that captures and transmits values, to Malaga society, providing an additional attraction to its leisure offer”.
On this occasion, LookOut Pro has interviewed the president of the Societá Dante Alighieri Málaga and precursor of the Italian Film Festival of Malaga, which this year has brought as a novelty the creation of a mural by the international urban artist Alice Pasquini, on one of the adjacent walls of the Contemporary Art Centre of Malaga, the CAC.
An Italian who has lived in Malaga for many years, professor at the UMA and president of the Società Dante Alighieri Malaga, what do you highlight about the city and its evolution on the national and international cultural scene?
I arrived in Malaga 23 years ago, when the Malaga Film Festival was in its infancy and there was neither the Picasso Museum, nor the Thyssen Museum, nor the Pompidou Museum, nor the Russian Museum, nor the Muelle Uno…, even in Calle Larios there were cars. The evolution of Malaga has been impressive: the bet has been totally winning, the result of great teamwork. The City Council’s Department of Culture has done a fantastic job, Noelia Losada has been able to create the perfect synergies to reach the level that Malaga has today.
The Malaga Italian Film Festival was created with the aim of promoting Italian language and culture through film. After this sixth edition, can it be said that you are sticking to your initial objectives?
Absolutely: believe me when I tell you that it is an enormous responsibility to be the representative of a culture as powerful as the Italian one. We are the mediators of that culture and the success of the proposals will depend on us alone. Six editions have gone from strength to strength and now we can say that the festival is well established. Spreading Italian culture continues to be the main objective, but more to understand what unites us than what separates us, to create cultural bridges.
How would you describe the importance of the Festival for Malaga’s cultural offer?
In culture nothing is negligible, everything counts. It is important that the cultural offer is as wide and varied as possible. Italian culture is close to Spanish culture, and specifically in Malaga there is a large Italian population, more than 20,000 inhabitants, to which must be added the itinerant population. Strengthening these cultural ties remains an objective. A small but significant example. The number of Italian Erasmus students who choose Malaga to complete their studies is very large, among other things because they feel at home, and we contribute in some way to this feeling of proximity. And all this is well known to the Italian diplomatic representations present in the territory, the Italian Embassy in Madrid, the Italian Institute of Culture and the Italian Consulate in Malaga, to which I am personally very grateful for the constant support. We have many projects in sight for Malaga and certainly also for the Italian community living in our city. We also refer to them: this festival is also theirs.
As a new feature, this Festival has counted on the collaboration of the urban artist Alice Pasquini, of recognised prestige within the international cultural panorama with the elaboration of a 24 metre mural in the Soho of Malaga, how did this initiative come about? Has it had an impact on the diffusion of the event on a new scale?
I would especially like to thank Giulia Donnarumma, an extraordinary colleague at Dante Alighieri, because the idea was hers. She had a dream, she had been thinking about it for a long time. We tried without success, but the real rapprochement with the artist came thanks to a contact, Marta Gargiulio, curator of the mural that we can admire today in Soho Malaga. The teamwork has been fantastic and when we contacted Alice Pasquini we immediately set in motion a project that was of great interest to the Department of Culture of the City of Malaga and to our headquarters in Rome, especially to the Secretary General Alessandro Masi. We also had the support, and forgive me for repeating myself, of the Italian diplomatic corps, the Italian Institute of Culture has really been a strong supporter, and especially the director Marialuisa Pappalardo. At last Malaga has a work by Alice Pasquini and for us, for all the Italians living in Malaga and on the Costa del Sol, this is a luxury…
Finally, what is your assessment of this year’s Malaga Italian Film Festival compared to previous editions?
It couldn’t be more satisfactory. We have increased the number of spectators by around 40%, the reviews have been praiseworthy, we have diversified the parallel activities with music, art and theatre, we have gained the loyalty of a large part of the public and even in Italy it has had repercussions, as indicated by the media who have picked up the news of our Festival. We are not satisfied, because we want to continue growing, but the result of these six years, and especially this one, has been good, very good.
