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The Sicilian Film Festival is a showcase of Sicilian directors and movies created in Miami in 2006 by Emanuele Viscuso. This American display of the Sicilian cinematography underlines the Sicilian cinema, literature and also its links with the international Cinema.
'Emanuele Viscuso, is a sculptor, a musician, a designer and a cultural promoter. His most famous piece is the 45-foot-large sculpture "Wave-bridge on the imaginary" located at the Milan Malpensa international airport. In 2006, Viscuso founded the Sicilian Film Festival in Miami, a showcase of Sicilian directors and movies. In 2008, Viscuso created in Castelbuono, Sicily, F.I.M.O. International Organ Music Festival in the Churches of the Historical Princedom of Castelbuono.
The SFF is the first organization that brought the existence and the importance of Sicilian cinema to the world stage by considering that Sicily is second in Italy after Rome in producing movies, that some of the best Italian directors are Sicilian (Giuseppe Tornatore won an Academy Award for Cinema Paradiso), that an incredible number of Hollywood stars are also Sicilian (consider Frank Sinatra, Vincente Minnelli, Martin Scorsese, Frank Capra, Susan Sarandon, Cyndi Lauper, Sylvester Stallone, Joseph Barbera), and that an impressive number of directors from all over the world have chosen Sicily as a site for shooting their movies. Given the enormous number of Sicilians and Sicilian descendants throughout the world tired of the unjust association of their name with the Mafia and in search of a new cultural identity as an alternative to the inaccurate stereotypes, its founder Viscuso appears to have developed the right formula for involving millions of people into a converging project and a merging association. This formula includes an international background granted by the fact that the SFF is held in the United States of America rather than in Sicily, as well as the fact that other local editions of SFF will be held in other cities in the USA and in the world. At the same time the close relationship with the mother-island is established by this same "Ambassador of Culture" with the creation of another extremely successful event in Sicily, the FIMO International Festival of Organ Music in the Historical Princedom of Castelbuono at its first edition in 2008.
Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 20 regions of Italy. It is one of the five Italian autonomous regions, in Southern Italy along with surrounding minor islands, officially referred to as Regione Siciliana.
Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a European country consisting of a peninsula delimited by the Italian Alps and sorrounded by several islands. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean sea and traversed along its lenght by the Apennines, Italy has a largely temperate seasonal climate. The country covers an area of 301,340 km2 (116,350 sq mi) and shares open land borders with France, Slovenia, Austria, Switzerland and the enclaved microstates of Vatican City and San Marino. Italy has a territorial exclave in Switzerland (Campione) and a maritime exclave in the Tunisian sea (Lampedusa). With around 60 million inhabitants, Italy is the fourth-most populous member state of the European Union.
Rome is the capital city and a special comune of Italy. Rome also serves as the capital of the Lazio region. With 2,872,800 residents in 1,285 km2 (496.1 sq mi), it is also the country's most populated comune. It is the fourth most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the centre of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4,355,725 residents, thus making it the most populous metropolitan city in Italy. Rome is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio (Latium), along the shores of the Tiber. The Vatican City is an independent country inside the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city: for this reason Rome has been often defined as capital of two states.
The Sicilian Film Festival [1] has fast become America's window on Sicilian cinematography and culture.
The city of Miami Beach, where the festival is located, made in 2007 the official proclamation of a Sicilian Film Festival Day in recognition of the cultural impact in the city.
