The Trento Film Festival is back… and so is the UNESCO Dolomites Prize!
The festival is one of the most eagerly awaited events of the year for anyone who loves the mountains. And it has been since 1952. This year will be the sixty-sixth Trento Film Festival, running from 26 April to 6 May. As in the past, the UNESCO Dolomites Foundation will be presenting a special prize in collaboration with SAT (Società Alpinisti Tridentini), alongside the usual gold and silver “Genziana” awards, continuing the partnership with the most important film festival dedicated to the mountains which is one of the Foundation’s original and long-standing supporters.
LAST YEAR’S WINNER:
“FROM THE DOLOMITES TO THE ANDES”… VIA CANADA
At the 2017 Trento Film Festival, the “UNESCO Dolomites” prize went to the Canadian director Nettie Wild for “Koneline: Our Land Beautiful”. According to the Jury, this film stood out for the way in which it expressed the awareness of local communities for the environmental importance of their land and their ability to actively promote its conservation. These values are at the heart of the Dolomites’ candidacy as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and can also be found in many concrete applications in the Property’s Overall Management Strategy. Wild’s film is set in the Andes and describes a situation which many mountain hut owners in the Dolomites can identify with: waiting for the snow and the tourists, the fear of all their hard work going to waste and their resilience to life at 3500 metres. This worry, once private and personal, has become public and universal, namely in reflections on climate change.
SPECIAL “UNESCO DOLOMITES” PRIZES
The Trento Film Festival is not the only cultural event to feature the “Special UNESCO Dolomites Prizes”: a while ago, the Foundation decided to award special prizes at a number of festivals throughout the provinces of Belluno, Bolzano, Pordenone, Trento and Udine. The latest one to be awarded was at Dobbiaco, as part of the Dolomystic photography competition, where Günther Pitscheider was the recipient. Before that, the Foundation honoured the memory of Sergio Reolon and his service to the community at the Pelmo d’Oro Award 2017, Vandana Shiva, who spoke at Pordenonelegge about the “Environment and innovation”, for her work raising awareness of certain issues and the work of Ferruccio Vendramini “Prima del Vajont. Per una storia di Longarone e dintorni” (Before the Vajont. For a history of Longarone and its surroundings), published by Cierre Edizioni, which was presented in Tolmezzo during the Leggimontagna festival. The aim of the Foundation is twofold: firstly to spread awareness of UNESCO values in each of the territories (and, due to the prestige of some of the events, in Italy and abroad); secondly to unite the individual territories by creating occasions which show how everyone in the Dolomite Systems recognised by UNESCO is linked, irrespective of their cultural, linguistic or administrative differences. They are united by their duty and the honour of promoting conservation of the Dolomites, sustainable development of the territory and the environmental and cultural values which motivated the decision to include them in the World Heritage List.