ADVAITA FILM presents WALKING ON WATER (Camminando sull'acqua) A documentary film by (Italy, 2016, 52 ) World Premiere 57th Festival dei Popoli Special event 4th November 2016, Florence, Italy Contact +39 338.5929110 gianmarco.dagostino@gmail.com 1
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CREDITS A production by Advaita Film Story by From an idea by Paolo Fantacci Director of Photography Yari Marcelli Editing Alessandro Anichini Original Music Roberto Procaccini Sound Editor Saverio Damiani Color Correction Alessio Lavacchi Translation from the original Italian by Bernard Wade Produced and Directed by 3
LOGLINE The Florence flood through the eyes, camera and creativity of Beppe Fantacci, who helped the world-famous artisans of Florence survive the devastation of the city. SHORT SYNOPSIS The flood of 1966 in Florence as seen through the eyes, camera and creativity of Beppe Fantacci, who helped the famous artisans of Florence survive the devastation of the city. A forgotten story of desperation, creativity and recovery, the film features unreleased, amazing 16 mm colour footage, and exclusive memories of the flood by families such as Bargellini, Ferragamo, Pucci, Tayar, and by gifted artisans who survive today thanks to men like Beppe Fantacci. The film has been selected for 13 Film Festivals worldwide, receiving the following awards to date: BEST DIRECTOR AWARD, Mumbai International Shorts International Film Festival PLATINUM REMI AWARD, WorldFest Houston, Texas, US. BEST DOCUMENTARY AWARD, Est Film Festival, Montefiascone, Italy SYNOPSIS 4 November, 1966. Florence wakes up in water and mud. During the night, the river Arno had flooded the city centre and its surroundings. History, Art and daily life of Florence are in danger of extinction. During these dramatic hours a man with a camera Beppe Fantacci accompanied by his 11-year-son Paolo, is filming the destruction of his beloved Florence with a plan in his mind, while his dear friend and city mayor Piero Bargellini cries out to the world for help, Beppe a selfmade businessman who had grown up in the US met with two well-known friends: the designer Emilio Pucci and the buyer Enzo Tayar. Together they will fly to New York just a few weeks later to show Beppe s shocking film to the managers of big department stores there and raise money to help the Florentine artisans to get back on their feet. A forgotten story of deep desperation, Italian creativity and will to survive, the film features amazing unreleased, 8 and 16 mm colour footage, narrated by Paolo Fantacci fifty years later, and exclusibe memories of the flood by famous Florentine families such as Bargellini, Ferragamo, Pucci and Tayar, and by gifted artisans who survive today thanks to Beppe Fantacci. 4
FESTIVALS & AWARDS 57th Festival dei Popoli (Florence, Italy) November 4th, 2016 Special Event - World Premiere 5th Mumbai Shorts International Film Festival (Mumbai, India) December 21st, 2016 WINNER: BEST DIRECTOR 20th N.I.C.E. New Italian Cinema Events 2017 (Moscow - Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation) April 3rd, 2017 5th GardenCity International Film Festival (Bangalore, India) April 6th, 2017 50th WorldFest Houston (Houston, TX, U.S.A) April, 2017 WINNER: PLATINUM REMI AWARD 35th Valdarno Cinema Fedic (San Giovanni Valdarno, Italy) May 2nd, 2017 3rd Premio Marcellino De Baggis, Festival Internazionale del cinema documentario (Taranto, Italy) May 4th, 2017 11th Est Film Festival (Montefiascone, Italy) July 24th, 2017 WINNER: BEST DOCUMENTARY AWARD 3rd Middlebury New Filmakers Festival (Leicester, VT, U.S.A.) August 25th, 2017 16th Festival Internazionale del Cinema d'arte (Milan, Italy) October 11th-14th, 2017 11th Voices from the Waters International Traveling Film Festival (Bangalore, India) October 18th, 2017 5
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GIANMARCO D AGOSTINO (DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, SCREENWRITER) Gianmarco D'Agostino was born in Arezzo in 1977 and graduated in Cinema History and Critical Analysis at the University of Florence. Since 2001 he wrote and directed several documentaries and promotional campaigns, commissioned by public institutions and bank foundations. He directed many short movies, including La Fuga (The Escape), written with the novelist Marco Vichi and screened as part of the exhibition Viaggio a Nord-Ovest (Castello dell'acciaiolo, Florence), which was visited by more than 10,000 people in two months. He directed several art documentaries hosted by Antonio Paolucci, director of the Vatican Museums, among which was Il Tempo di Michelangelo (Michelangelo s Times) about the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican and the Medici family chapels in the Church of San Lorenzo, Florence. Very interested in social issues, he has worked with prisoners in the jails of Florence and Ferrara for a year, some of whom became the main characters of the documentary Oggi voglio parlare (Today I want to talk). In 2015 he founded his production company, and produced a multimedia package for the Museo del Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence, which opened in October 2015. Currently he is developing two feature films with Italian screenwriters Marco Vichi and Matteo Bortolotti, and pre-producing the documentary Florence, the Consul and I, co-produced by the German production company KickFilm. The film will tell the story of the director's quest on the trails of Gerhard Wolf, the German consul in Florence during WWII who risked his life to save Florence from Nazi fury. To develop this film Gianmarco was admitted to Archidoc, a documentary workshop run by La Fémis, France, sponsored by the Media Programme, and selected for the following forums: Verzio DocLab (Budapest), Italian DocScreenings (Florence) and When East Meets West (Trieste). He was also selected for the Dragon Forum workshop in Krakow. Research for this film has brought Gianmarco to Israel, where he directed the video-art elements used to stage a performance of Don Giovanni by Mozart, for the Jerusalem Opera in October 2013, and to Montreal and Geneva to carry out interviews. His latest film is Camminando sull'acqua (Walking on Water), a 52' documentary about the tragic events of November 4th, 1966 when a flood devastated Florence. 7