Cinema Italiano _{by Alessia Belsito-Riera}

Buonasera e benvenuti. For one night, on Wednesday the 22^nd of May, Southern Cross Garden Bar Restaurant will be transformed into a New Zealand cinema paradiso for The Show Me Shorts Italian Short Film Night.

The collection of six short films will be presented in collaboration with the Embassy of Italy and co-curated by Show Me Shorts and La Guarimba International Film Festival in Calabria – the region sitting at the toe of the Italian boot.

In these six stories, the weird and wonderful collides with the mundane for extraordinary results that will delight, surprise, and inspire.

“Delve into this collection of short films that explores the Italian way of life,” Show Me Shorts director Gina Dellabarca says. “Naturally, family, food, religious traditions, and the other religion, football, feature strongly.”

Il giorno del muro directed by Daniele Greco is a documentary that is part of a series dedicated to Sicilian folk festivals. Andrea Frenguelli’s Uomini e Fuochi is a documentary about the human desire to blend with the infinite through ritual practices. In A Short Trip directed by Erenik Beqiri, an Albanian couple face a fateful appointment. Sweet Dreams is an animated black comedy about a motel housekeeper by Maria Zilli and Sara Priorelli. In Alessandro Sampaoli’s Pepitas, Andrea lives at home with his mum and visually impaired nonna. Il mondiale in piazza by Vito Palmieri sees a group of friends organise a football tournament in their town. In Paola Sorrentino’s animated Girls Talk about Football, six professionals share their experience playing women’s soccer.