Banishanta is a small strip of land, one hundred meters long and ten meters wide, located in the Bay of Bengal, south of Bangladesh. It is inhabited by a community of prostitutes. Rising water levels, the erosion of the land and the frequent hurricanes are slowly cancelling everything that still remains of the island. Razia, Khadija and Shefali, three of the last 65 women still on the island, fight every day for their homes and the future of their families. Soon, the entire population of Banishanta will be underwater, thus becoming one of the communities which have fallen victim to climate change. “In the social heterotopia of the island bordello of Banishanta, madness, destiny, love, the body, social demands and childhood take on unexpected – and sometimes contradictory – features that are nonetheless intensely vivid and authentic. By using these universal themes as a guiding star, the film tells the story of a few women of the island in order to paint a collective fresco of this extraordinary, and precarious, community of sexual workers.”
Biography
film director
Giovanni Giommi
giovanni giommi (Milan, Italy, 1965) studied at the Scuola civica di cinema in Milan, before working as a writer, producer and director for the TV channels Tele + and Mtv Italia. He then made Nel cuore delle alghe e dei coralli - I cento passi di Peppino Impastato, which he shot during the production of the film One Hundred Steps (2000) by Marco Tullio Giordana. He next directed Beisbol and in 2005 he began collaborating with Massimo Coppola on the TV series of TV Avere ventanni. The following year, he presented Politica Zero at the Torino Film Festival and in 2007, always at the TFF, his film Les ninjas du Japon won the Avanti! award. Parafernalia was selected for the Locarno Film Festival and for the 2008 Courmayeur Noir Film Festival.
FILMOGRAFIA
filmografia/filmography
Sol y sombra (doc., 1997), Nel cuore delle alghe e dei coralli - I cento passi di Peppino Impastato (doc., 1999), Beisbol (doc., 2000), Nice! (doc., 2000), Frames - Variazioni per catena di montaggio (doc., 2004), Avere ventanni (coregia/codirectors Massimo Coppola, Alberto Piccinini, tv, doc., 2005-2007), Politica zero (coregia/codirectors Massimo Coppola, Alberto Piccinini, doc., 2006), Les ninjas du Japon (doc., 2007), Parafernalia (doc., 2008), Bad Weather (doc., 2011).
Cast
& Credits
regia, fotografia/director, cinematography
Giovanni Giommi
montaggio/film editing
Fabio Capalbo
musica/music
Ursula Schifflein
suono/sound
Igor Francescutti, Bruno Pappalettera
produttore/producer
Heino Deckert
produzione/production
ma.ja.de. filmproduktion
coproduttori/coproducers
Brian Hill, Carlotta Mastroianni
coproduzione/coproduction
Century Films, Cornbread Films, Zdf
vendita all’estero/world sales
Deckert Distribution