August 2008
Italy, 2009, 9’
by Rä di Martino
Soggetto Rä Di Martino
Riprese Alessandro Chiodo
Montaggio Rä Di Martino
Testo BBC News dell’agosto 2008
Colonna sonora Mauro Remiddi, Porcelain Raft
Produzione Rä Di Martino

 Film presented at Lo schermo dell'arte 2018

A dusty domestic scene, with disturbing presences: taxidermied animals, kitsch furnishings, traces of a washed-out existence. Two protagonists seem frozen in a pose that is emotionally loaded but lacks movement and development. Their only action consists of singing an incongruous series of news headlines from August 2008, in tunes of a few intermittent notes. With unmoving indifference and catatonic fixity, singing words that evoke wars, bombings and crisis, the characters seem like sleepwalkers without memories, prisoners of a dream, or perhaps a nightmare.

 Rä di Martino

Rä di Martino has investigated the relationship between cinema and visual arts thanks to a production spanning from cinema, to installation and photography. Her film work, presented numerous times in previous editions of Lo schermo dell’arte, is characterized by being able to combine the genre of the documentary with fiction, exploring the possibilities of cinema as a mean to create situations full of charm and sometimes paradoxical. 

She has exhibited her works in international institutions including Palazzo Grassi, GAM and Fondazione Sandretto in Turin, MACRO and MAXXI in Rome, Museion in Bolzano, Hangar Bicocca and PAC in Milan, the Tate Modern in London, the MoMA PS1 in New York, and the MCA in Chicago. Her films have been shown on numerous occasions including Art Basel, the Kassel Dokfest, the Torino Film Festival, the Venice Film Festival.