LABORATORIO PINOCCHIO IN SCENA - PRIMA PARTE

If animation is a universal language, then stories told using this technique are even more so. In the Western world, animation has long been considered just ‘for children,’ whereas it has the exceptional power to bring characters who exist on the border of illusion and reality to life, sometimes preserving timeless pictures and drawings. The discoveries and rediscoveries of this year’s Pesaro Film Festival Circus present stories and characters that resonate with everyone’s childhood, amid whales, deserts, puppets, Coca-Cola bottles, and enchanted forests and are suitable for audiences of all ages. More than ever, it is now important to look at film animation from the past to understand how to make a film was challenging in terms of production and the level of invention involved: from vertical cameras improvised on top of ironing boards with scaffolding pipes up to entire production departments set up between a living room and a kitchen. But also to understand how all techniques are now used, ranging from the most artisanal – see the stop motion in Tales from the Magic Garden by David Súkup, Patrik Pašš, Leon Vidmar, and Jean-Claude Rozec – to the most experimental, as in Reza Memari’s The Last Whale Singer, developed in Unreal Engine. Additionally, Circus 2026 is celebrating the notable anniversary of Allegro non troppo by Bruno Bozzetto, who has just been awarded the Special David at the David di Donatello Awards in Cinecittà. His masterpiece starred a very young Maurizio Nichetti, to whom the Italian Cinema Special Event is dedicated. To mark the 200th anniversary of Carlo Collodi, PFF Circus bringing four extraordinary Italian animated reinterpretations of Pinocchio back to the silver screen: the nightmarish, dark version by Gianluigi Toccafondo, the irreverent and poetic puppet designed by Roberto Catani, the garish character created by Lorenzo Mattotti and animated by Enzo d’Alò, and the amazing piece of wood painstakingly drawn by Giuliano Cenci. These short and feature-length films tell the well-known story of the wooden puppet who wanted to become a child in so many different ways, capturing its various aspects, or even overturning it to see if it can still stand upright. But is being good children really necessary, as was recommended by Collodi’s novel? “Truth is an illness in the country of lies,” wrote Gianni Rodari. Reversing Collodi’s perspective is now more necessary than ever to expand the scope of artistic research and production for everyone, including young and old, experts and beginners. Rodari, in his writings for children, stated, “Where are the fairy tales? There is one to be found in everything: in the wood of the side table, in the glass, in the rose.” Therefore, alongside screenings in the cinema and the square, PFF Circus is proposing several workshops again this year, where you can learn and create unpredictable stories through animation, the use of ‘poor’ materials, and plenty of imagination – the one that Bruno Munari, another important expert of children’s creative mechanisms, defined as “flinging all into the air with cheerfulness…” So, with cheerfulness, suspended between illusion and reality, let us welcome the young and future cinephiles and filmmakers into the embrace of Pesaro Film Festival CIRCUS.