IT
An idea is not an individual object, a mysterious event that suddenly takes a finished shape from nowhere. It’s the result of desires and intentions, of an impulse that soon becomes will. A new idea is not static, is not solitary, it doesn’t remain unaltered for even a moment.
It is, rather, similar to a network of neurons churning synchronously, reaching a never before experienced configuration that, from there, will continue to increase and to take new shapes along its path.
To depict Giffoni, we can start from here. We can talk about an idea that constantly arouses many more, that introduces new models, new possibilities for today’s and tomorrow’s society.
Some ideas prove to have the power to fuel cultural growth, to generate economic growth, to change and improve everyday life, to unveil different paths able to resolve crisis situations. All the incentives to produce new ideas are drivers of development and growth for the whole territory which hosts them. Giffoni is a context that meets these requirements and, at the same time, intercepts other valuable contexts to highlight and create them.
A goal achieved that seemed impossible: pushing the limits of the suburbs, to the point of embedding the world itself and allowing a small village of southern Italy to receive important titles, necessary works and personalities so important that their lead, in terms of heritage of thought and culture, is still evident and defined.
More than 50 years have passed since the first edition of the festival, more than 18,000 days of activity in which Giffoni has shown that there is another way to think about young people, to make them participate to fundamental contemporary issues, to involve them in those decisions that determine their present and everyone’s future.
At the origin lies a gamble on cinema and on the sharing of stories as a prerequisite for the improvement of the quality of young people’s lives. The result of this gamble emerges from the testimonies of the ex-jurors, from the demeanor, the trust and the academic and professional achievements of the many who have lived the Giffoni’s experience, of the young people who, through the films, the reading and the sharing of stories, have found self-definition, ambition and appetite for education and social commitment.
Giffoni’s cinema is a different kind of cinema, where films tell stories coming from all over the world, in all languages, in all genres, styles and forms imaginable, selected with a work that leaves nothing to chance and scours the entire corpus of the global production. At the same time, they convey a discourse about cinema and a viewpoint on young people, thanks to an accurate selection that always chooses childhood and youth as the gravitational center of the story, around which beauty, torment, anguish, desires, dreams, conflicts and the lacerations of a wonderful and troubled age orbit.
And what we can notice, as the years go by, is that young people who had this opportunity don’t come back. They keep asking for variety, abundance, looking for value in the differences of the world, in the discovery of new places, alternative ways of thinking and new perspectives, in order to interpret the world and themselves. In the locations and the events of Giffoni a special training takes place: a training to curiosity. What we discover is that there is never just one answer to important questions, there is not just one truth. We collect many testimonies of the children who, after the Giffoni experience, have started to seek new opportunities to express themselves and deal with others and to talk with their parents or their teachers in a totally different way, a more conscious and involved way.
Giving them the opportunity to discover other worlds, other cultures, other forms of thought, interpretations of reality which would otherwise be out of their reach, means creating the conditions for the affirmation of a sense of community able to counteract any division.
The experimentation, the continuous activity of expansion, the exploration of other spaces, other forms and new dynamic related to the world and the needs of the new generations, are the actions that have turned Giffoni into a cultural company with sixteen different departments dedicated to specific project guidelines in the fields of communication, film production, innovation, organization of events and education.
What started as a festival is now a cultural landmark, a generator of ideas which works to intercept new opportunities and new markets for the benefit of thousands of young people who thus find tools to imagine, dream and share.
And, even more, Giffoni generates creators, artists and innovators meant to improve the quality standard in whatever life path they choose. In this regard, it performs an invisible and fundamental task: it promotes a global sharing system among young people, it contributes to the rise of an increasingly creative and talkative generation and to the diffusion of an even greater number of ideas.
It’s a company that never forgets its core, it always tightens around culture and the promotion of policies, institutions and practices aimed at gathering us as a community, a happier community in which new generations have the tools to contrast racial prejudice, bullying, violence, depression and any other threat of this time.
Thanks to the training made in Giffoni, young people worldwide learn now to actively practice empathy, as an existential choice, as a natural condition in relationships. In so doing, they find themselves happy.
