Lorenzo Ciani

Italian director Lorenzo Ciani was born in Florence, in Tuscany on July 7, 1982. July 7th in Japan it'is considered the day of the stars, and maybe this is not a coincidence. His family has humble origins. His parents moved to Florence before he was born from the Monte Amiata, an area of mountains in the south of Tuscany. His father, for over 40 years, has worked as a cook and his mother meanwhile was a teacher in the school of the neighborhood. Lorenzo, since young age, was attracted by movies and images. He decided to study History of Cinema and Television at the Florence University, but he interrupted his studies when school fees become too expensive. He began to do occasional jobs, and he had to stop making short films he used to do with his friends at the University. With the money he saved in those years, he could afford to go to Japan for a short period of time and meet new people and lifestyles. This trip was the turning point in his life. Back in Italy he decided to continue his studies. In 2011 Lorenzo Ciani had the honor to meeting Terry Gilliam at the "Fellini Award" in Italy. On that occasion Gilliam suggested not to focus too much on the studies, and told Ciani that it's better to buy a camera and make video like he used to do when he was at the University with his friends. Lorenzo started again to make short videos, and one day he decided to create a short documentary: "Food A Way To Integration", that was sent for an international competition in Singapore. May 17th 2012, Lorenzo Ciani receives for this documentary in Singapore the "Asia-Europe Short film Award". Back in Italy he continues as independent video maker. With a small camera he brought in Singapore (GoPro Hero2), he did a video documentary on his adventure: "Lost In Singapore". For this work he received compliments from official channel of the GoPro camera. In 2012 he also made a seven minutes documentary: "Truffle Of Sand" for helping people in a valley, Valle di Chiecina (Tuscany), that has as its topic the use of the land in a beautiful valley, destined to become a site of quarries, despite the beautiful landscape and the richness of truffles.