La Zattera dell’Arte Cultural Association

Since 2010, the La Zattera dell’Arte Cultural Association has continuously operated in the film sector, organizing festivals, exhibitions, editorial activities, and audiovisual productions, collaborating with significant national and international cultural institutions. It inherited the cultural legacy and extensive materials from the Milani Association, which managed the Saletta Milani in Messina for over a decade and organized six editions of the Messina Film Festival between 1995 and 2001. The event brought renowned guests to the city (Nanni Moretti, Stefania Sandrelli, Matteo Garrone, Rocco Papaleo, Citto Maselli) and produced performances with international artists like Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, and Zbigniew Preisner, who exclusively scored live performances for silent films by the Messinese director-actor Febo Mari. Significant collaborations also include Ennio Morricone, who composed music for the rediscovered 1909 silent film L’orfanella di Messina, and Franco Battiato, who performed a live score for a montage film featuring images of the 1908 Messina earthquake.

The association manages the Giuseppe Tornatore Documentation Center and has curated numerous retrospectives on the director in Spain at the Valencia Festival, in Tirana, Albania, with the Italian Embassy, and at the Bif&st in Bari. Additionally, it organized the celebratory 25th Anniversary Exhibition of Nuovo Cinema Paradiso in Los Angeles, in collaboration with Cinecittà Luce and the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles.

It has produced five short films and documentaries: Scharifa (2019) and Jason Brown (2022) by Fabrizio Sergi, Turi Ferro. L’ultimo Prospero by Daniele Gonciaruk (2019), Verso casa (2019) by Antonello Piccione, and Andrei bene per il cinema muto (2021) by Monica Felloni.

Among its editorial activities in cinema are notable publications like Il cinema sopra Taormina (2012) and its English version, The Stars of Taormina, with a foreword by Giuseppe Tornatore, and Bellini al Cinema (2022) for the Bellini International Context by the Regional Department of Tourism, Sport, and Entertainment of the Sicilian Region.

In 2018, 2019, and 2020, the association organized the Cinemadivino Sicilia Festival, in collaboration with the national Cinemadivino organization.

It is a member of the Center for Cinematographic Studies in Rome, the Italian Film Festival Association, the Coordination of Film Festivals in Sicily, and the AreaSud Network within Italiafestival.