Screening report at Cinema Village in Manhattan and online
We are writing this report about six months after the holding of one of the most important film festival in the world dedicated to the theme of work.
The experience at the Workers Unite! Film Festival came when we were about halfway through the ten months of the festival-like torment. Now we can certanly say it: participating in the Workers Unite! Film Festival was absolutely one of the most important experience. And we can say this despite the fact that it was not really possible to be present live.
We have already reported the situation we have experienced since the end of September (G7 in Syracuse, Labour Film Festival, Nebrodi Cinema Doc). Until a few days before the screening on October 23rd at the Cinema Village in Manhattan, we were still confident we could leave. But then the perfect storm broke out and to the problems due to overlapping work commitments, important personal impediments were added. We gave up only two days before the screening at which the director Ludovico Ferro was expected by the festival audience for the Q&A.
One of the biggest disappointments was not being able to meet the audience. A large, attentive and qualified audience. We know this for sure, because many of our fellow countrymen were there who told us in detail what the atmosphere was like and what the audience’s reactions were to seeing the film.
We really wanted to participate in a festival entirely based on cinema that deals with work. Above all, we wanted to be there to see and better understand what it means to organize an event of this kind in the United States. The name of the festival should already explain how much more complicated it is there to advance and have workers’ rights recognized. As in almost all festivals of this type, the event is supported, if not promoted, by the union movement. The New York festival is no exception and is actually supported by the main US unions.
But what makes the Workers Unite! Film Festival unique and very important is the work that has been done for 13 years to select, screen and distribute, also online, the best of the world’s documentary and fiction film production that tells the story of work.
The Workers Unite Film Festival represented for us a precise and fundamental moment in the journey of The Interview at Sea. We had for the first time the awareness that our film dealt with a theme that could potentially interest a much larger and more heterogeneous audience than one might have thought.
More than one person had told us that our film dealt with a theme that was too particular (work at sea) and above all that it addressed issues that were too limited to the Italian or at most European borders. And instead from New York it was clear, and it was then confirmed several times, that The Interview at Sea is not a film on a niche theme and for a geographically limited audience. Above all it was clear that our film could interest (or be accepted) also for the cinematographic and stylistic choices.
We will have to return to this last point perhaps later with a dedicated article. Here we can explicitly say that The Interview at Sea at Workers Unite! Film Festival was also chosen for its being a hybrid between documentary and fiction, something that in other festivals (both documentary-only and also festivals about work) has constituted an element of exclusion a priori.
The experience of L’intervista in mare at this festival has allowed us to become aware of how much strength we could have, even in our extremely small size.
And this strength came to us thanks to the recognition received from a festival that has shown us all its strength. The result of a vigor and involvement that must necessarily be greater than in other places, but that remains balanced and does not result in pure and simple militancy. This strength is expressed entirely in the meeting with the public and in the online activity of a structured associative network and a community that contributes to developing the discussion starting from the films. A strength that is seen in the communication and promotion capacity that does not devalue or trivialize the contents.
Workers Unite! Film Festival seemed to us the perfect prototype of what a modern festival should be: motivated, rigorous, linked to screenings in theaters and live debates, but also able to use streaming to amplify and prolong the positive effects of its action (To understand and verify directly what we are talking about, we leave, at the end of the article, a series of links).
We have benefited from all these opportunities. After the live screening, The Interview at Sea was online from October 25 to 30 on Eventive, the main streaming platform for the most important American independent film festivals. An important and prestigious showcase through which The Interview at Sea had the opportunity, as we will see, to pass also later.
So the Workers Unite! Film Festival has entered our hearts, as has the city where it takes place. And even if we have not yet been there in person, it seems, as we will see, that The Interview at Sea has a particular connection with New York and especially with the island of Manhattan.
Useful links:
2024 Workers Unite Film Festival
‘The Interview At Sea’ and ‘The Fuse’ – Events – Labor Heritage Foundation
Workers Unite! Film Festival 2024 | Screen Slate
