The San Diego Italian Film Festival in just a few short years has established itself as the place to be for great food, great films, and great talk. You can get all three again this weekend with their CineCucina at the Birch North Park Theater.
CineCucina kicked off last night at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park with a selection of shorts about food. But the centerpiece event is on Saturday May 22at the Birch North Park Theatre where the short film “Find Strange” and the feature film “Focaccia Blues.”
The Saturday begins at 11:00 am with what is being called Piazza CineCucina, an outdoor farmers market (at the corner of 29th St. and North Park Way) featuring local produce, artisan foods, and Italian specialties. Then at 6:30 the program begins at the Birch Theater for “Slow Life in a Tuscan Town,” a narration through photos by Douglas Gayeton.
Then SDIFF presents the premiere of the short film, “Finding Strange,” funded through a grant by the Linnie Cooper Foundation. The theme of food plays out with a young teen cast who find relationship and happiness in unexpected places. The evening concludes with the San Diego premiere of Nico Cirasola’s “Focaccia Blues,” about a bread maker in southern Italy who stands up to a big food corporation. The film is described as “part documentary, part report, part fiction, all based on real events and put together with real Italian brio.”
For more information visit the SDIFF website.
