Take a look. It’s important.

 
The Idea of the Provinziale
 
Every person has a destiny, whether he lives in Shanghai or Trampe. Between birth and death he finds disappointment and fulfillment, sits in the first or last row, searches for happiness and finds life. This is what our short and animated films show and they tolerate no objection. It’s impossible to tell where things are better, unless wars or calamities come into play. The smell of cow sheds and subway stations can’t be subjected to judgment. There is no reason to look down on the lives of people in the world’s far-flung and seemingly hopeless corners. And it would also be a mistake to discount the experiences of people living in metropolises.
 
Still, one thing should not be overlooked: the decisions about the future of our societies are made in the province, at the water’s edge, on fields and in the forests, not on the international stage. In places with few people their actions are experienced in direct relationship with their environment. The effect of work is not diluted by a complex but vague network of value chains. The basis of our existence does not coagulate into an idea by the media and advertising.
In the country people become victims of our energetic furor, because their villages become flooded for the construction of a dam. Families stare into the abyss because one month of guest labor in Germany results in more income than a whole year of sheep breeding in Romania with three people. Maddening speechlessness threatens villages that are beautiful, but become deserted all the same. And the attempts of assigning new values to rural spaces teeter between sense and nonsense – between aesthetic concepts and convoluted investment fantasies.
 
The provinces are under pressure. Their civil society weakness makes them vulnerable to all forms of abuse. Still, they have the ability to surprise. Rural spaces in the Far East still hold on to cultures with an enormous will to live. And in the Italian area of Piemont some former villagers decide to pay tribute to the last woodcutter of their region and for a moment they stop the flow of time.
Ecology, economy, even freedom and justice are in danger in places where few people remain, but which provide food and energy for all. However, this does not mean that the inhabitants of these areas hold our destiny in their hands. They can only experience and describe the processes of our time. And they can try to keep some space for their own lifestyle.
 
Currently, there is no other medium able to discuss these issues better than film. With interest and commitment teams and individuals go to the provincial areas and accompany the people there, in order to understand their experiences and communicate them to us.
That’s the idea of the Provinziale: not occupying a niche, but to be an indispensible link between Shanghai and Trampe. There are quite a number of films and some of them are very good – short ones and long ones, animations and documentaries.
We hope to have selected the best ones for you and that you will be able to follow these films with as much empathy and passion as the characters of the movies and the filmmakers do. We look forward to a film festival that can be described like this: they celebrated for eight nights and eight days…
 
Kenneth Anders
 
Programme commission Dokumentary film competition  Provinziale