Film Premiere: Voyage to Procida

EduLeisure with Mooney Marketing and Varesco Produzioni present Voyage to Procida a film by Frederico Siniscalco which has its American premiere in Hollywood, California at the Cinelounge Independent film festival November 11-14, 2021.

Federico Siniscalco, director of Voyage to Procida, has been professionally involved in documentary cinema since the early ‘90s. He teaches documentary filmmaking focussed on intercultural communication at the University of Siena, Italy and has frequently been a visiting faculty in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures here at the University of Rochester. Voyage to Procida is Federico’s homage to one of the most beautiful gulfs in the world, an area he left as a young man, but that continues to maintain a stronghold on his heart.

Donna Logan, who is one of the executive producers of the film, is director of the University of Rochester Lisio Italian Studies Programs in Italy. She has been active for many years in the organization and coordination of our programs in Arezzo and Procida.  Here she focused her managerial know-how on the production of a film that investigates issues of intercultural communication, travel, and the problems connected to establishing oneself in a foreign culture.

“Every film is born with a particular approach and style. Ours is inspired by American Direct Cinema, or, more generally, observational documentary. In fact, one might consider our film something like a documentary fiction. This is not to say it is a “mockumentary”, or “fake” documentary. On the contrary, what is documentary-like is our approach to filmmaking, an approach that also pays homage to a glorious phase of Italian cinema, Neorealismo, as represented by such filmmakers as Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, and Luchino Visconti. Similarly to the early films made by these directors, we used non-actors, except for our female protagonist, Georgia, played by Melanie Neu. In this case, however, we chose someone who is not an established celebrity, and who resides in Italy thanks to her passion for the country and its way of life. The other characters are actual residents of Procida, who have relationships which are close to those described in the story, and who inhabit the locations seen in the film. Many of their daily activities are what we see them perform on screen. In this sense, much of the movie could be defined as a documentary depicting Procida and its people.”