"A JOURNEY TO TEULADA" WON THE MINORITY CO-PRODUCTION FUNDS OF THE ITALIAN MiC!
30/04/2024


Our feature film "A Journey to Teulada" won the Italian minority co-production fund*, We expect to start production early 2025, together with our co-producers Isla Productions and Mommotty! Stay tuned, you will fall in love and fight with our protagonists!

*Euros 240.000: results published at this link

CEASEFIRE NOW
23/02/2024


We made this banner with the children during the Christmas workshop at the EMERGENCY Santa Maria di Pisa site in Sassari.


Let's not look the other way. Let's strike and raise our voices. Stop the war. We are not indifferent to this. Ceasefire now.

WE JOINED "A JOURNEY TO TEULADA"
25/11/2023


The year is 1956. In Teulada, South Sardinia, something is changing. NATO has opened a military polygon, the second largest in Europe. Assunta will be forced to flee to Corsica, only to come face to face with her past, again, sixty years later. It will be Fatima, a Syrian teenage refugee in Ajaccio, who will accompany her on this journey of the soul. 

With Fatima, we'll protect Assunta and her story of courage, war, love and community. 

We are happy to join the project A Journey to Teulada, a film by Nicola Contini, produced by Isla Productions, Mommotty, and Flora's Room. Art direction by Riccardo Atzeni. Developed in the lab of NAS - New Animation in Sardinia. Winner of the TitraFilm Prize at #Annecy 2020.

CHITU WON THE PRODUCTION SELECTION OF THE ITALIAN FUNDING!
28/08/2023


Our short film "Chitu" won the Italian funding*, arriving second with a total score of 93/100. We expect to start production in September 2024, together with our co-producers BFILM.cz!

Praise the team! The ugliest monster of Italian cinema will soon be at your door!

*Euros 25.000: results published at this link

"S'AMMUTADORI" IS ON YOUTUBE!
06/04/2023


"S'ammutadori" (2021) is out now on YouTube!
The demon of the night assaults us in sleep and shows us the origin of our greatest fears. The deepest ones. Two stories of lost innocence intertwine with each other through quiet inner fights.

Don't forget to leave a comment to let us know your thoughts!

FLORA'S ROOM AT NORTHWESTERN
26/09/2022


It’s a privilege to be given the time to discuss our goals and the things we care about. In such a delicate moment for our country, we strive to represent an Italy open to diversity and change. We strive for solidarity and love and the celebration of our culture.

Thanks, Northwestern University, for the opportunity to share our point of view and our work. Education is where everything begins and where people can get the tools they need to grow free from the weight of
judgment. It was a pleasure to meet the students.

During the lesson, we showed our short film "We Are Not Alone" and discussed how independent animation works in Sardinia and Italy and how important it is to enforce your principles and look to the future. Finally, we collected the students' impressions and explored how they related to the issues we addressed.

During the Q&A, we collected the students' interest in Sardinian culture and their curiosity about what the main aspects of the sense of belonging to our island were for us.

Immersed in the quiet of Evanston and then passing through the beautiful buildings of Chicago and its jazz, another experience of sharing and exchange has characterized our new journey.

Ad maiora!

AN AFTERNOON FOR EMERGENCY
28/05/2022


The first Flora's Room event with EMERGENCY and Diritti al Pride took place in Sassari on May 28. Working with the children and getting carried away in their worldview was exciting.


On the one hand, Fabrizio led the class in the work of creating their hero, a design process during which the children created characters that reflected what, for them, are the characteristics of a hero today (we recommend the bottle of plastic that fights for the environment.). We gave ourselves crazy joy with colors, trying to understand together what the mission of EMERGENCY is.

Thanks to EMERGENCY Sassari, to Diritti al Pride, to the Libreria Giunti al Punto 3 in via Cavour, to the Associazione Galleria Cavour and the Pilo family, and to the parents who have brought already highly sensitized children, who give us so much hope!

FLORA'S ROOM AT NAU
11/02/2022


We had the excellent opportunity to present Flora’s Room at the Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. First, we talked about Sardinian culture through the medium of animation. We talked about our battles to reach inclusivity, equality, and a better representation of underrepresented and misrepresented communities. Finally, we discussed animation as a learning and development tool for children.

We thank NAU, Francesca, and Kevin for this great opportunity. In the following days, it was beautiful to see how the history of our magical land could merge and cross with the history of the Native American communities in Arizona and Utah.

There is so much to discover, to share, so much to learn, and so much to strive for.

CHEEEEESE!
13/05/2021

Get your popcorn ready!


We announce that the production of our first animated short film, "S'ammutadori", has come to an end and we can't wait to show it to you! In carrying out this project we made use of the precious advice of the ammuntadore itself, the lord of fears. We can say that it has been of great help to us. Looking it in the face and confronting it is complicated but in the end it pays off!  Also, the ammuntadore and Flora took a couple of pictures together to celebrate!

Photo credits: Paolo Palmieri / 3D art by Fabrizio Di Palma / Hair and make-up: Katia Simeoni

REMEMBERING ANTONIO GRAMSCI
27/04/2021


Antonio Gramsci died on April 27, 1937, but his teachings have never been lost.

So today, we tell you a little curious about this great Sardinian.

Known for his profound culture, journalist, polemicist, writer, unfortunate father, and husband, everything can be said about his relationship with childhood, except that he lived in a world of fairy tales—just the opposite.

He knew a world of turncoats, persecutors of justice, enemies of freedom and justice, factious and perjury, interested only in personal profit and the attainment of power, but he fought tirelessly with his high moral and historical testament of the "Letters from prison" to restore his truth and to leave a memory to his children and everyone, of himself, of his Sardinia and Italy.

In "Letters from prison," Gramsci talked to his children about his childhood experience and how he had dealt with and raised small animals: hawks, cuckoos, hedgehogs, turtles, a snake.

Then these confidences took on the guise of animals and two children, the protagonists of these fairy tales, to read before bed. They tell of hedgehogs hunting for apples, of buckets with crabs and small fish, of battles between crows and owls, of cunning foxes struggling with defenseless peasants and foals, of the game of checkers, of freedom in drawing, of school and of growing children, of men who fall and rise again, and make us understand how important is the study of History and with it of reality and Nature. The story often extends to apologies, alluding to great wisdom, such as that of a man who fell into a deep well and receives no help from anyone, not even from a minister of God, but who relies only on his strength to save himself. "

Source: altritaliani.net
Illustration by Fabrizio Di Palma

HAPPY LIBERATION DAY!
25/04/2021


Happy April 25th from the Flora's Room team!
We like to imagine that our Otto was a partisan in his day!

The Liberation Day in Italy is celebrated every year on April 25th. On this day since 1946 we remember the liberation of our country from the fascist government and the Nazi occupation. April 25th is also known as the anniversary of the Resistance, a bank holiday also dedicated to the values of the partisans of every front who, starting from 1943, contributed to the liberation of Italy.

Source: studenti.it

"Alive, I am a partisan. Therefore I hate those who do not take sides, I hate the indifferent."
- Antonio Gramsci

ELEONORA D'ARBOREA
14/04/2021


Today, for Sardinian history, there is an important anniversary!
The Carta de Logu of the Giudicato di Arborea is a medieval collection of laws and regulations of the Kingdom of Arborea written in the Sardinian language in the variant called "vulgar arborense". It is one of the most important "constitutions" of the Middle Ages: according to scholars, in fact, the provisions contained therein are very innovative and modern for the time. But there's more.

The Carta de Logu, in addition to having great value from a legal, historical, literary and linguistic point of view, is a document of immense symbolic and political value for all Sardinians who believe in freedom and justice.
A deep-rooted historiographic tradition affirms that the Carta de Logu was promulgated by the Judge Eleonora d’Arborea on April 14, 1392 or Easter Day (Pasca Manna): a significant date that symbolizes the rebirth of Sardinia.


Source: pipius.com
Illustration by Fabrizio Di Palma

SOUND SAMPLING
26/03/2021

Follow our sound designer Beatrice Mele in her adventures!


During the adventure of sampling sounds in the meanders of our island we were lucky enough to come across the talent of Giuliano Sannai, bassu of the tenor "Su Remediu" de Orosei. The tenor group "Su Remediu" has been active since 2007, to carry on the traditional singing a tenore of our land and the town of Orosei, a town in the province of Nuoro known all over the world for its beauty.

The canto a tenore, which developed within the pastoral culture of Sardinia, is a form of polyphonic singing performed by a group of four men using four different voices called bassu, contra, boche and mesu boche. It is characterized by the deep and guttural timbre of the bassu and the controvoices and is performed standing in a circle. The soloists sing a piece of prose or poetry, which may also belong to contemporary cultural forms of expression, while the other voices make an accompanying chorus. Giuliano's voice is precisely that of "su bassu"!

The Sardinian tenore singing is part of the Unesco Intangible Heritage.


Source: unesco.it

During our trip we also had the privilege of working with Paolo and Tobia Pusceddu of the Arbus Knife Museum, the "Arburesa". The Arburesa is a typical Sardinian switchblade knife with a rounded blade. These sounds were used in the context of Urbe Mendax, the place where the trauma that started Anna's nightmares occurred. The moment in which the girl observes that memory is formed by moments of anguish that tear her apart like blades. For this reason we decided to sample the sound of the blades and machinery used to forge one of the typical knives of the Sardinian tradition, which have formed a composition to accompany the music.

Fun fact! The Arburesa has beaten two Guinness World Records! The first time, in 1986, Paolo Pusceddu built a folding knife weighing 80kg and measuring 3.35m in length with a 1.25cm thick blade. The knife remained in the Guinness World Record as the largest knife in the world until 2000.
In 2001 Paolo Pusceddu created a stainless steel Arburesa with a curved Paduk wooden handle with an incredible weight of 295 kg and a length of 4.85 meters with a 2.25 cm thick blade. He thus earned the record for the heaviest knife in the world!

Source: museodelcoltello.it

Sardinian Carnival
16/02/2021

Did you know that...?

Sardinia holds the national record for number of Carnival masks. There are 35 of them.
We recall, for example, the masks of the Sartiglia of Oristano, in particular su Componidori, the leader (illustration 2), the Mamuthones (illustration 3) and the Issohadores of Mamoiada, and the Boes (illustration 4) and Merdules of Ottana. There is the Carnival of Su Maimulu in Gairo and Ulassai, the black masks of S'Attitidu and Gioldzi in Bosa, Sa Maschera in Gattu di Sarule, Sos Urtos and the Buttutos in Fonni, Sas Mascaras Nettas and Sas Mascaras Bruttas in Lodè. We also remember the white sheets of Aidomaggiore, Sos Cotzulados of Cuglieri, Sos Tamburinos of Gavoi, Su Corongiau of Laconi, Su Maimoni of Gadoni and the chariots of Tempio. Certainly some are missing so do not hesitate to let us know which ones!

We share some curiosities with you:
The first annual release of Mamuthones and Issohadores in Mamoiada takes place on January 17, on the occasion of Sant’Antonio Abate. Su Componidori, the leader of sa Sartiglia, is considered almost like a god, and from the moment he/she is dressed and gets on his/her horse, he/she no longer has to touch the ground until the moment of undressing! It would bring bad luck! The parade of allegorical floats of the Tempio Pausania Carnival ends with the passage of King Giorgio, the mythical king of the Tempiese Carnival!

Our Ammuntadore had the honor to wear the grace and beauty of the Sartiglia's costumes! We missed sa Sartiglia a lot this year!

Sources: ilturista.info, @lanuovasardegna, carnevaletempiese.it, Regione.sardegna.it

S'AMMUTADORI
04/02/2021

Who is s'ammutadori?


"S'ammutadori" is the sleep demon. According to Sardinian folk beliefs, this demon strikes its prey while they sleep causing them a feeling of anguish, oppression, and suffocation.

From a scientific point of view, the work of the demon can easily be traced back to the phenomenon of hypnagogic paralysis (better known as sleep paralysis). Some people even claim to have seen the ammuntadore in person, sometimes in the form of a witch, in other cases as a shadow, a skeleton, a cloud of steam, a bloody face. Even today, some elders firmly support the existence of the demon.

Historically, it is assumed that the figure of the ammuntadore saw its birth at the time of the conquest of the island by the Romans, after 241 BC. Other theories, however, place the birth of the belief well before this date.