Creuza de ma

The Creuza de Mà - Music for Cinema Festival acts as an open workshop, driven by an experienced working group that merges and intertwines the different aspects of musical activity with critical-theoretical analysis. While it is true that film music must be considered in terms of its "specificity" (that is, its complementarity with the cinematic image), the Festival grants it "centrality" in respect of the aesthetic canons, which are, nonetheless, the canons of musical art. Creuza de Mà is therefore a recognizable point of reference for the diverse universe of musicians, sound technicians, composers, and directors who care deeply about and give attention to this particular and highly important aspect of cinema.

Key pillars of the festival are film music concerts, where the fundamental "live" component transforms from a spectacle into a moment of reflection, and conversations with directors and musicians can themselves become a performance.

Master Classes are essential, offering meetings between directors and the composer (the creator of the soundtrack), which explore the strategies used for different soundtracks, and how dramaturgical and musical challenges are faced and resolved in this vast territory, where understanding and communication occur through constantly reinvented codes, where mysterious mechanisms arise, due to the ambiguity and abstractness (in the sense of asemantic nature) of music. In the context of a film, music, together with sound, is called upon to express what neither words, nor images, nor colors, nor costumes, nor set designs can convey.

The relationship between the director and the composer during the making of a film has always sparked interest and curiosity among both cinema scholars and the general public. The meetings that delve into these "special" artistic relationships, styles, and compositional methods are conducted with expertise and passion by Luca Bandirali (film critic and professor of Screenwriting History and Techniques at the University of Salento, and host of the cult radio show Hollywood Party on Rai Radio3), Riccardo Giagni (musician and composer, professor of Film Music History at the Faculty of Cultural Heritage at the University of Salento), and Enzo Gentile, music critic for major Italian publications.

Creuza de Mà - Music for Cinema, as a supplement and corollary to a festival dedicated to applied music and sound, also features a section of silent films from the past with live soundtracks, screenings of rare and unusual films and documentaries, always introduced by the creators and experts, as well as photographic exhibitions and informative sessions on music and sound. The musical score, which is not part of the reality of the film, mixed with direct sound and sounds specially created for the occasion, constitutes the sonic aspect of a film: a territory that the Festival explores.