Valerie Barrett, Giulio Vita and Sara Frattini came together in the unlikely town of Amantea in Calabria, all drawn together by a common ancestry that had flung them to various corners of America and Venezuela when their families emigrated from Italy decades ago.
Drawn by a passion to know more about their origins and reestablish roots in the region, the threesome bonded over similar stories they had all heard from their parents about a small outdoor theater that had once thrived in Amantea—the type of place people fell in love, had their first kiss and maybe even broke each other’s hearts.
As it turns out, the idea of restoring a theater with a summer film festival was only tangential to the change Valerie, Giulio and Sara were about to inspire—young people in Amantea had never met anyone quite like them, twenty-somethings who were doing. You see, like many small towns in Calabria, there is the sense that failure is imminent and success is impossible. Some attribute it to a well-known and long-standing mafia presence, others to the misfortune of being born poor in a small town.
Whether out of curiosity or boredom, people of all ages began trickling into the old forgotten theater on weekends with empty hands and able backs, taking their turns at tediously scraping and painting rust-covered chairs and fighting back endless yards of overgrown landscaping. Thus, the real triumph of the festival quickly became its capacity to bring a community together and show that the past had not been forgotten, nor the future forsaken.
La Guarimba, or ‘safe place’ from an indigenous Venezuelan language, was officially born. And with it, a model for enacting change that can perhaps be replicated by the young people of Calabria and if Valerie, Giulio and Sara have their way, the world.
The film selection and professional jury process that the three have put together, however, are just as impressive. With no public funding, La Guarimba managed to gain the attention of other like-minded organizations and received donations from the Bram Stoker Film Festival and local sponsors. Directors and filmmakers made the trek from around the world to Amantea last summer, somehow magically attracted to the calls of Southern Italy. The group was proud to host internationally recognized director Nacho Vigalondo. Three-hundred submissions from around the world were pared down to just forty among three official categories and a people’s choice award.
But that isn’t all. The idea to add one-of-a-kind film posters to La Guarimba was in honor of Frattini, who is an illustrator. The group reached out to artists worldwide and asked them to create posters for the festival the way they would have been done for film premiers before the advent of mass-market posters and press materials. The result: a film + art show that is ready to debut in America.
Dates for San Francisco are slated for February 14 – 20, but La Guarimba has yet to nail down a viewing space, and is actively seeking partnership with just about anyone that can house a projector and some seating—bars, bookstores, film schools, coffee houses, etc. If you are interested in helping La Guarimba come to life in San Francisco, please contact info@laguarimba.com. To learn more about the festival visit http://www.laguarimba.com/en/index.html.
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