Baluardo Cinema, Carrara: excellent premiere

Article originally published on culturainrivera.it.

Carrara is finally getting a movie theater again. Even if only for three months. Three months, however, is enough for a restart, to try to give a city back a place of aggregation where culture can be promoted. And this is in all likelihood the main purpose of Cinema Baluardo.

The opening night of this second season of the Carrarese film festival ended a few hours ago. The guys from thePermanent Assembly, the group of citizens formed after the 2014 flood, are still animated by the intent to try to change the city. This was well pointed out by Emilia Fazzi Contigli, mayor of Carrara from 1994 to 1998, who served as the event’s patroness: the Assembly boys, in fact, replaced the municipal administration. Where the latter has been lacking, citizens have been busy, and they have managed to donate to the city, without asking anything in return, a truly commendable initiative, free of charge, open to all.

On the steps of the Bulwark, under a clear, starry sky of a late spring evening, people of all ages, from all walks of life, of all colors were there. There is room for everyone in this corner of Carrara. And it’s not rhetoric: the first evening really went like this. Citizens eager to see Carrara reborn under the sign of culture, experienced firsthand. Citizens eager to reappropriate an evocative historical space and put it to a noble use. And, of course, citizens eager to see a movie in company: an activity that for years, unbelievable but true, is no longer possible to accomplish in a city of more than sixty thousand inhabitants. Cinema Baluardo thus takes on an additional, very important role: that of erasing the sad reputation of a city without a cinema that Carrara has unfortunately earned for the past few years. As mentioned in the opening, it is a beginning: but it is a hopeful one, not least because the Baluardo steps were well packed.

The premiere of Cinema Baluardo featured a screening of God Exists and Lives in Brussels, the masterpiece by Jaco van Dormael, winner of numerous awards in his home country of Belgium, as well as several international prizes. A departure, then, with a film that is both entertaining and profound, capable of making one reflect, a film of the highest cultural level, an exponent of the surrealism that strongly connotes Belgian art, with references to the painting of Magritte, the cinema of Buñuel, the music of Händel, Rameau, Trenet and many others.

So the message, if one can say so, seems clear: Cinema Baluardo has in store an intelligent programming, which knows how to address a heterogeneous audience in a transversal way, with films that are the result of a careful selection able to offer the right mix between entertainment and reflection. The initiative, in short, is promoted with flying colors: all that remains is to wait for the next dates, which will be held every Monday until the end of August. The schedule is available on Cinema Baluardo’s Facebook page, and is distributed, in the form of a flyer, during all the appointments, which, we remind you, start at 9:30 pm. We leave you with a few images from the evening:

The front rows of the audience at the opening night of Cinema Baluardo in Carrara

Teens of the Permanent Assembly of Carrara open Cinema Baluardo

Emilia Fazzi Contigli opens Cinema Baluardo

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