Some years ago Rosaria Bonsignorio, Danco Singer and Umberto Eco were sitting at a bar, taking an aperitif in Milan. While talking the conversation focused on communication, this important aspect of everyday life, on its shades and meanings and on the changes that withstood in the years. The conversation delved deeply, up to the point that they decided to create a festival dedicated to the subject. Eco even sketched out a playlist of the interventions for the first edition on a napkin.
In short time from the words they passed to the facts and in 2014 it was organized , in Camogli, the Communication Festival, the first of its kind in Italy. The organizer were the same three friends that met in Milan, even if the great scholar Umberto Eco died, Rosaria Bonsignorio and Danco Singer kept organizing the festival that found in Camogli its ideal location.
The event is now at its 4th edition and its importance has grown from year to year, so much that last year the Festival presentation took place in Paris in March at the Cultural Italian Institute. The Festival has made the Ligurian hamlet “of the thousands white sailing ships” the cultural pole dedicated to the communication, address in all its shades.
The rendezvous is for September 7th,8th,9th and 10th in Camogli . In this occasion the main theme of the meetings and of different events within the Festival, all on free entry, will be the Connections. There will be 130 guests among journalists, historians, writers, communication experts and philosophers. The second edition of the Communication Prize sees as winner Piero Angela, well known for its decennial work as scientific journalist on tv with the program Super Quark. He will receive the prize Sunday 10th after his intervention schedules for 5.15 pm at the Social Theatre.
Take part in the Communication Festival means to have the occasion to listen to experts and journalists, and at the same time to live Camogli in a different way. It will be this gorgeous maritime hamlet with its squares and other meeting points to do as background for the conferences, workshops, labs for children, shows and expositions. The new attraction this year will be the Teatro Sociale, where some of the conferences will take place; the building comes back to be a lively part in the community of Camogli, after a long period of closure that ended last year.
This year the discussion will focus on the connections, the links between men and the world outside. As always, it is in the Festival style to look in details every subject chosen, so that it will be possible to offer to the participants an overview of topics to ponder. In our everyday life we are always connect with each other, thanks to the wonder of technology. We were connected even before internet, the smartphone or the telephone itself. There are other connections that overcome all this and involved deeply the society, which have affected the course of History. At the Communication Festival we will think about these mechanisms that changed with the passage of time, leading to the actual political and cultural situation.
In addition to the conferences there will be shows. On stage we will see the journalists Beppe Severgnini, Federico Rampini and Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, the actress Nicoletta Braschi and many others. There will be short films projections, as the documentary called “L’altro Eco”, dedicated to the loved but unfortunately passed away semiologist.
As for the artistic aspect, some exposition will be set up. Fotografando il Festival is a photographic exposition that shows the history of this event up till today: the author is Robert Cotroneo, the pictures will be exposed in via Garibaldi. The second exposition is Omaggio al Mare and its authors are Carlo Rognoni and Alberto Perini Sea. It is a tribute to this wonderful element of the Nature (the sea), capable to help us to communicate our feelings. The pictures will be exposed in the harbour of Camogli.
There will be many activities for children, most of them will have the sea as main topic.
Those who would like to enjoy the territory as well, can take advantage of the guided excursion organized for the occasion. It will be possible to go whale watching, to do a night tour with the ferry in order to enjoy the stars, hiking in the park of Portofino and much more.