BABYLON: GHETTO, RENAISSANCE, & MODERN OBLIVION Wins Best Picture at ASTI International Film Festival

The prize for Miglior Film, or Best Picture, in the International Documentary Section of the Asti International Film Festival was awarded to Babylon: Ghetto, Renaissance, and Modern Oblivion, the first film of soprano and Salon/Sanctuary Concerts series director Jessica Gould, capping off an extraordinary year for Gould's directorial debut.

The hybrid music-documentary short, released a year ago, brings 2021 to a close with a dizzying 90 awards from festivals across the globe, including laurels for Best Short Documentary (Tokyo International Short Film Festival), Best Musical Film, Best First Time Director, and Best First Time Producer (Silk Road Festival Cannes), Best Documentary (Hollywood Blvd Film Festival), Best Social Justice Film, Best Black Lives Matter Film, and Best Music in a Short (Mykonos Film Festival), Best Musical Film, and Best Voice Over (Oniros Film Awards of New York), Best Sound Design (Rome Movie Awards), Best Original Script (London International Monthly Film Festival), among many others.

A complete list of awards can be found here.

Babylon's message of racial reckoning, the debt owed to minority musicians throughout history, and the vital need for reform of the current music industry has struck a chord with viewers of all races, nations, and faiths, and taken the global film festival circuit by storm, making Babylon the most highly awarded early music film of all time.

Babylon: Ghetto, Renaissance, and Modern Oblivion considers the resonance of Psalm 137 (By the Waters of Babylon) through the music of two ghettoized peoples - Italian Jews of Mantua during the period of the Counter-Reformation, and African Americans before, during, and after the Harlem Renaissance.

Titanic-voiced actor Ezra Knight (The Tender Bar, Law & Order, Billions) narrates a script that interweaves works by Italian-Jewish composer Salamone Rossi (1570 - 1630) and contemporary American Brandon Waddles (1988 -). Featuring the groundbreaking Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble, other musical selections include historical recordings by Ma Rainey, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Big Mama Thornton, The Fisk Jubilee Singers, as well as two luminaries in contemporary West African music - Kevin Nathaniel Hylton and Yacouba Sissoko. Composer Brandon Waddles' original composition, Singing wid' a Sword in My Han', performed by the Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble, brings Babylon to an exhilarating close.

Additional Rossi works include performances by the Bacchus Consort, Voices of Music, and Jessica Gould, who lends her soprano to the film in collaboration with lutenist Lucas Harris.

Babylon is an original project of Salon/Sanctuary Concerts and made possible by the generous support of NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò.

The Asti International Film Festival has been held since 2011 in Asti at the Alfieri Theater and in the Sala Pastrone, and is organized by the Circolo Cinematografico Sciarada, in collaboration with the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Asti. The festival has enjpoyed the presence of guests such as actresses Guia Jelo and Serena Rossi, directors Giancarlo Scarchilli, Giovanni Piperno and Mimmo Calopreste, and others including Luca Argentero as producer, Sergio Múñiz, Laura Morante with his first film Ciliegine and the screenwriter Andrea Cavaletto. The festival director is Riccardo Costa. Artistic consultant the film critic Filippo Mazzarella. The Festival had among its collaborators the writer Giorgio Faletti, the director Lucio Pellegrini and the actor Andrea Bosca.

Check out the trailer here:

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