The Department of Modern Literatures and Cultures at the University of Richmond welcomes Albanian filmmaker and actor Edmond Budina, who will present his award winning movie Letters in the Wind (2003) on Monday, February 26, 2007.
The movie depicts the heartbreaking journey of a father, Niko Gjini, in search of his son Mikel who has immigrated to Italy. The odyssey to find out the truth about his son, with whom he has contact only through letters, becomes the physical and metaphorical journey of an upstanding, unemployed professor in present-day post-communist Albania.
Movie: Letters in the Wind, Albania-Italy, 2003 (in Albanian with English subtitles)
Where: BYRD THEATER
(2908 West Cary Street, Richmond, VA)
When : February 26th,
2007 -- 6:00pm -9:00 pm
Free and open to the public
The movie will be introduced by John Treadway, Professor of History (European diplomatic and Central and Eastern Europe) and will be followed by an open discussion with the movie director Edmond Budina.
About the director: Edmond Budina is both the director and leading actor in the film. Prior to making Letters in the Wind he worked for many years as a director and actor at the National Theater in Tirana, Albania. For several years, he also was the Artistic Director of the National Theater and professor of the Albanian Academy of Dramatic Arts in Tirana. He was a political activist who fiercely opposed the Albanian communist regime and was the co-founder of the Albanian Democratic Party. In 1991, he left Tirana (Albania) for Vicenza (Italy), where he lives with his family and works for a plumbing company. The movie was produced with support from a highly competitive grant, given by the Italian Department of Cultural Affairs (Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali).
Awards: Letters in the Wind has competed in twenty international film festivals, where it received enthusiastic praise and a number of awards, among them “Best Film” in the Austrian Film Festival and “Best Screenplay” in the “Concorso delle opera prime italiane”. In 2004 Letters in the Wind was awarded the prestigious “Premio Qualità” among all the Italian cinematographic production of 2003 by the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali.