In the formation of personal or social memory, the fundamental word, contrary to what is generally believed, is not remembering but forgetting. We should know or remember this constantly. After all, it is not even a considerable issue in our lives. What matters to society engineers is to make people forget and they achieve this by ceaselessly and repeatedly reminding the redundant, what is consumable or overrated. Documentary is a format, which has been used during this deceptive process from time to time; however, it has become pollutted a little too easily.

We have come together here for a few days, but let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that the number of people who resist to what has been going on has increased. Cruise tourism, for the first time, has surpassed the limit of 2 billion dollars in 2016. Good morning Taranto (2014) by Paolo Pisanelli, Milk System by Andreas Pichler (2017), Messenger (2015) by Su Rynard, Sunú (2015) by Teresa Camour Guerrero, Cotton Dreams (2014) by Sandeep Rampla Balhara are good examples that may prove me wrong. However, all these films and many others are not enough to change that powerful, distorted big picture presented from televisions and virtual world.

These outstanding works and a few other documentaries that we haven’t mentioned here cannot fix the big picture. Let’s fix and intervene in this picture together. We have to be together and act with solidarity to do that. We expect you and your films to our independent, small, slow festival.

We expect you on our small and beautiful island between 9-13 October 2019.

BIFED Team