Sei Festival – Sud Est Indipendente is conceived, produced, and promoted by the Coolclub Cooperative of Lecce, under the artistic direction of Cesare Liaci. Since 2006, the festival has brought the most interesting sounds of Apulian, Italian, and international music to Salento, offering audiences a broad and varied panorama of music, from punk to singer-songwriters, from rock to ska, from folk to offbeat rhythms. And that’s not all. The festival also offers meetings, book presentations, exhibitions, and collateral activities for children and vulnerable groups. In the summer of 2020, SEI settled into the Castello Volante in Corigliano d’Otranto, offering a rich program. The festival is supported by the Puglia Region and, since 2017, by the FUS – Fondo Unico dello spettacolo (Single Entertainment Fund) of the Ministry of Culture.
In the various locations in Salento that hosted the festival in the first thirteen editions (Gallipoli, Otranto, Corigliano d’Otranto Castle, Castro, Masseria Torcito in Cannole, Torre Regina Giovanna in Apani, the marina of San Cataldo, Piazza Libertini, the Roman Amphitheatre and Belloluogo Park in Lecce and many others), international artists such as Kings of Convenience, Lee Ranaldo, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Cat Power, Suzanne Vega, Peter Hook & The Light, Skatalites, Joan as Police Woman, Patrick Watson, J.P. Bimeni & The Black Belts, Giant Sand, Hollie Cook, Gogol Bordello, Mad Professor, Bombino, Russell Leetch (Editors), the Italians Vinicio Capossela, Daniele Silvestri, Baustelle, Calcutta, Franco126, Mannarino, Avion Travel, Negrita, Lo Stato Sociale, Calibro 35, Brunori Sas, Diaframma, Lorenzo Kruger, Bud Spencer Blues Explosion, Coma_Cose, Galeffi, Siberia, Canova, Colombre, Giorgio Poi, Bugo, Cosmo, Verdena, Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti, Vallanzaska, Teatro degli Orrori, One Dimensional Man, La Municipàl, Dente, Giovanni Truppi, Giardini di Mirò, Lucio Corsi and many other groups from Puglia, Italy and the rest of the world.
The Cinema del Reale Festival is a cultural event conceived and organized by Big Sur, together with the associations OfficinaVisioni and Cinema del Reale, with artistic direction by Paolo Pisanelli and creative coordination by Francesco Maggiore. It is more than a documentary film festival: it is a creative workshop, a laboratory that stimulates imaginative capacity in locations, a celebration of gazes dedicated to the most daring, curious, and inventive cinema one can see and hear. Along with film screenings, it hosts exhibitions, installations, performances, musical aperitifs, DJ sets, workshops, masterclasses, and meetings with filmmakers open to all.
Since 2004, it has brought life to villages and historic sites in the most beautiful towns of Salento, inviting the public to inhabit squares, historic buildings, underground oil mills, covered markets, parks, and churches. Since 2017, it has been held in Corigliano d’Otranto. Every year during the festival, the Castello Volante, like a large open-air movie theater, hosts screenings of films on two screens, along with exhibitions, installations, performances, musical aperitifs, DJ sets, workshops, masterclasses, and meetings with the authors open to all, transforming the ancient manor and village into a multifaceted laboratory for the practice of audiovisual and performing arts.
The works on the program are documentaries that generally do not enjoy widespread distribution. The Festival is the only major documentary film festival in Southern Italy that over the years has seen the presence of great filmmakers and internationally renowned guests such as Cecilia Mangini, Vittorio De Seta, William Klein, Lou Reed, Agnés Varda, Alexander Seiler, Lech Kowalski, Gianfranco Mingozzi, Ansano Giannarelli, Luigi Di Gianni, Pippo Del Bono, Matteo Garrone, Vinicio Capossela, Alina Marazzi, Enrico Ghezzi, Daniele Vicari, Leonardo di Costanzo, Alessandro Rossetto, Costanza Quatriglio, Daphné Hérétakis, Kostantina Kontzamani, Eva Stefani, Adrian Paci, Roland Seiko, Valentina Pedicini, Pippo Mezzapesa and many other authors.
Since 2015, the “Io non l’ho arresto” series has sought to explore the current state of journalism and political communication in Italy, with forays into Europe, the United States, and the rest of the world, through analysis of language and social media, the words and behavior of journalists, the political class, and voters/users. The series is organized by the Diffondiamo idee di valore association, coordinated by Pierpaolo Lala and Gabriella Morelli, in collaboration with the Conversazioni sul Futuro festival, the CoolClub, Big Sur, and MultiService Eco cooperatives, and with the support of the Municipality of Corigliano d’Otranto, thanks to the contribution of the Co. Re. Com. (Regional Communications Committee) of Puglia.
In its first six editions, the festival has hosted, among others, Diego Zoro Bianchi, Marco Damilano, Ferruccio de Bortoli, Massimo Bernardini, Marino Sinibaldi, Marianna Aprile, Alessandra Sardoni, Liliana Faccioli Pintozzi, Filippo Ceccarelli, Riccardo Luna, Luca Sofri, Francesco Costa, Eva Giovannini, Giovanna Pancheri, Alessio Lasta, Massimo Bray, Carlo Freccero, Aboubakar Soumahoro, Stefano Bartezzaghi, Vera Gheno, Giorgio Lauro, Luca Bottura, Saverio Raimondo, and many other guests. The festival has thus involved major Italian newspapers (La Repubblica, La Stampa, Corriere della Sera, Il Fatto Quotidiano, L’Espresso, Agi, Radio1, Radio2, Radio3, Radio Capital, La7, Rai 2, Sky Tg24, Rai3, IlPost.it, Huffington Post) and some of the most interesting scholars and protagonists.