Lo schermo dell’arte Film Festival 12th Edition

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12

Palazzo Strozzi
6.00 pm
EXHIBITION OPENING
VISIO. Moving Images After Post-Internet
The exhibition, curated by Leonardo Bigazzi, reflects on the transformations of the language of moving images and their exhibition models after the digital revolution. The 12 video works offer an insight on the legacy of the “Post-Internet phenomenon” and on the possible reasons of its definitive overcoming.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13

Palazzo Strozzi, Sala Ferri
from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm; from 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm
VISIO Artists’ Presentation
The participating artists introduce the fundamental themes of their artistic practice in a 15-minute presentation.

Cinema La Compagnia
6.00 pm
No More Reality Whereabouts by Philippe Parreno, France, 2019, 89’
vo: English; sub: Italian
Italian premiere
Philippe Parreno is one of the most radical artists of his generation. His works explore spaces in which the real and the imagined merge. No More Reality Whereabouts is Philippe Parreno’s first theatrical screening project. This feature film brings together excerpts of films the artist produced over the last twenty years, re-edited to create a “films’ film”, a hybrid between a retrospective and the creation of a new work. The film is accompanied by a piano performance of Mikhail Rudy, long-time collaborator of the artist, and is introduced by a Dhalang, figure of Indonesian shadow puppetry, who reads a text.
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9.00 pm
Letizia Battaglia – Shooting the Mafia by Kim Longinotto, Ireland, USA, 2018, 94’
vo: Italian; sub: English
The film is an intimate portrait of photojournalist Letizia Battaglia, a courageous woman who sacrificed personal relationships to fight evil in her country and her beloved city of a thousand contradictions, Palermo. Through her photos, mostly black and white, she shows misery and splendor, traditions, women and children, streets and neighborhoods, festivity and mourning, daily life and the face of power.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14

Palazzo Strozzi
from 10:00 am to 11:00 pm
EXHIBITION
VISIO. Moving Images After Post-Internet

Cinema La Compagnia
3.30 pm
FESTIVAL TALK
Jeremy Deller in conversation with Antonia Alampi
Jeremy Deller in conversation with Antonia Alampi, artistic co-Director of SAVVY Contemporary and curator of Sonsbeek2020-2024.
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5:30 pm
Olafur Eliasson: Miracles of Rare Device by John O’Rourke, United Kingdom, 2019, 61’
vo: English; sub: Italian
Italian premiere
The film follows Danish artist Olafur Eliasson and his team through the complex preparation for the Real Life exhibition at the Tate Modern in late 2019, a follow-up to the extraordinary success of his Weather Project (2003), visited by over two million spectators. The central theme of Real Life, and the basis of most of Eliasson’s work, is the interaction between natural elements such as water and light with the viewer’s physical perception of space.
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6:45 pm
FOCUS ON Jeremy Deller
In the presence of the artist
English Magic, UK, 2013, sound, 14’
Made for the British Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, English Magic includes visual and thematic elements that reflect Deller’s interest in the roots underlying British society: its cultural, socio-political and economic history, its icons and its myths. By staging events from the past, present and an imaginary near-future, Deller interweaves high and low, refined and popular, to create an intentionally provocative work.

followed by
Everybody in the Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992, UK, 2018, 61’
vo: English; sub: Italian
The myth of acid house as a niche musical genre, the exclusive domain of a small avant-garde of fashionable London DJs, is definitively exploded. With this film, Jeremy Deller explains, in a lesson given to London high school students, the birth and development of a culture and lifestyle that have forever changed the face of Great Britain, and places acid house at the center of the country’s social transformations between the 80s and early 90s. The film is commissioned and produced by Frieze in partnership with Gucci.
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9:00 pm
Making Manifesto by Cristian Pirjol, Germany, 2018, 37 ’
vo: German; sub: English, Italian
Italian premiere in the presence of the author and Julian Rosefeldt
Cristian Pirjol’s film follows Manifesto’s production, and provides an in-depth look at Julian Rosefeldt’s highly successful work. Thoughts and ideas are captured in backstage interviews, and sequences with actress Cate Blanchett.
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10:00 pm
In collaboration with Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci
Romanistan by Luca Vitone, Italy, 2019, 73′
vo: Romanì, English; sub: English, Italian
World premiere in the presence of the artist
On May 25, 2019 Luca Vitone and his crew left Bologna for Chandigarh to retrace the Roma people’s emigration from North West India to Europe at the end of the first millennium. In two vans, the crew crossed the Balkans, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Iran and Pakistan to reach India.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15

Palazzo Strozzi
from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm
EXHIBITION
VISIO. Moving Images After Post-Internet

Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Sala Pistelli
3:30 pm
FESTIVAL TALK
Collecting Films and Video | round table
with Beatrice Bulgari (In Between Art Film), Philippe Alain Michaud (Centre Pompidou), Mario von Kelterborn (Sammlung von Kelterborn).
At a time when the art market is dominated by the speculation and demand for unique objects, who collects works considered ephemeral as films and videos? The round table intends to examine the ways in which museums and private collectors build their collections of moving images and how these will evolve in the future.

Cinema La Compagnia
5.30 pm
FOCUS ON Jeremy Deller
Putin’s Happy, UK, 2019, 40’
vo: English; sub: Italian
Brexit has split the UK, in parliament and in the streets. Between January and March this year, Jeremy Deller filmed and interviewed pro- and anti-Brexit subjects near London’s Parliament Square. By isolating images and adding captions, Deller deciphers the symbols and interpret the language.
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6.40 pm
Ocean II Ocean by Cyprien Gaillard, USA, 2018-2019, sound, 11’
This cinema version of the video installation exhibited at the last Venice Biennale, this extraordinary of the french artist combines images of fossilized elements in the pavement and marble walls of subway stations in the former Soviet Union with archival materials that show New York subway trains being dumped in the Atlantic. This geological and ideological decay is accompanied by a hypnotic soundtrack realized from the echo of percussion on recycled oil-drum.
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7.15 pm
in collaboration with Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in the occasion of the exhibition Natalia Goncharova. Una donna e le avanguardie, tra Gauguin, Matisse e Picasso
Beyond the Visible – Hilma Af Klint by Halina Dyrschka, Germany, 2019, 93’
vo: Swedish, English, German; sub: Italian, English
Italian premiere
How can an artist who introduced abstract painting in the early 20th century be completely forgotten? Stuck in shadows throughout her life, Hilma af Klint’s extraordinary work upsets today’s art world. Halina Dyrschka’s film is the first about af Klint’s life and work, the role of women in art and the shocking discovery of an art world scandal.
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9.00 pm
Welcome Palermo by Masbedo, Italy, 2019, 75’
vo: Italian; sub: English
World premiere in the presence of the artists
In 2018 artistic duo Masbedo produced Videomobile for Manifesta 12, Palermo. They transformed an old van into “video wagon”, a mobile laboratory. This curious vehicle, equipped with a stage for performances and interviews, became a multi-channel interactive installation at the biennial. Welcome Palermo, dedicated to the relationship between that city and the cinema, covers the project’s evolution. Interviews with known and unknown personalities and archival material alternate with performances by writers, DJs and Palermo citizens who recite questions on sexuality asked by Pier Paolo Pasolini in his film Comizi d’amore.
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10.50 pm
FOCUS ON Jeremy Deller
The Bruce Lacey Experience by Jeremy Deller and Nicolas Abrahams, United Kingdom, 2012, 67’
vo: English; sub: Italian
Considered the leading figure of British “New Realism”, Bruce Lacey might be the “missing link” in the history of alternative English culture. During his long career as a painter, sculptor, shaman, robot builder, satyr, musician, Lacey collaborated with Lenny Bruce, Spike Milligan, and the Beatles. He never stopped making art, assembling futuristic automata and machines, performing surreal and sometimes shocking performances.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16

Palazzo Strozzi
from 10:00 to 8:00 pm
EXHIBITION
VISIO. Moving Images After Post-Internet

Cinema La Compagnia
5.30 pm
Ettore Spalletti. by Alessandra Galletta, Italy, 2019, 89’
vo: Italian, English; sub: English, italian
Italian premiere in the presence of the author
The author tells the story of secretive and influential painter and sculptor Ettore Spalletti, an artist far removed from the international art mainstream whose works are closely connected with the Abruzzo landscape, history and colours. After the passing of this inspiring master, the film represents a precious testimony of his art and spirit.
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7.30 pm
That Which is to Come is Just a Promise by Flatform, Italy, The Netherlands, New Zealand, 2019, sound, 22′
Italian premiere in the presence of the artists
In the South Pacific, Funafuti in Tuvalu archipelago has become the scene of an environmental catastrophe. Due to unnatural overheating, sea-water rises from the subsoil and floods the land, compromising all life on the island. The Italian collective Flatform has followed the story since 2010; they shot this short film entirely on-site.
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ore 20.15
Je te tiens by Sergio Caballero, Spain, 2019, 21’
vo: Spanish; sub: Italian, English
Italian premiere in the presence of the artist
A mother and daughter in an old Mercedes talk to each other, covering their mouths with their hands. The frame moves outside the cabin while the car travels through mysterious and disturbing places animated by unusual characters, kinetic sculptures and screens on which landscape projections alternate. Je te tiens is the first narrative film by Sergio Caballero, co-director of the Sónar festival in Barcelona. A first version of this film was the promotional teaser for the event’s 2019 edition.
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9.00 pm
VISIO YOUNG TALENT ACQUISITION PRIZE

followed by
in collaboration with American Academy in Rome and Black History Month in Florence
America by Garrett Bradley, USA, 2019, sound, 30’
Italian premiere in the presence of the artist
In thirty minutes of black and white images, the director intertwines scenes from Bert Williams’s new silent film Lime Kiln Club Field Day with twelve of her short films inspired by African American historical figures who’ve become “invisible”. The soundtrack was composed by Trevor Mathison, one of the founding members of the Black Audio Film Collective.
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10.30 pm
Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground by Chuck Smith, USA, 2018, 78’
vo: English; sub: Italian
An eclectic figure ahead of her time, a rebellious woman in a man’s world, Rubin embodied the artistic spirit of the 1960s. She introduced Andy Warhol to the Velvet Underground, turned Bob Dylan on to the Kabbalah, and bewitched Allen Ginsberg. Her friend and filmmaker Jonas Mekas kept her letters. Director Chuck Smith drew from Mekas’ archive to create this portrait of a great forgotten artist.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17

Palazzo Strozzi
from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm
EXHIBITION
VISIO. Moving Images After Post-Internet

Cinema La Compagnia
5.30 pm
Triple-Chaser by Forensic Architecture, UK, 2019, 11’
vo: English; sub: Italian
Italian premiere in the presence of Robert Trafford
The London-based Turner Prize research group returns in 2018 with the Triple Chaser project. The name derives from a tear gas grenade. The aim is to identify such grenades, in order to know their effective use against the population. Millions of images shared on the web via digital technology are examined.
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6.00 pm
Walled Unwalled by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Germany, Lebanon, 2018, 21’
Italian premiere
In the Funkhaus, a former East German radio station’s sound effects studio in Berlin, Jordanian artist and sound researcher Lawrence Abu Hamdan tells in a video performance of three legal cases linked by sound: how it is perceived by the human ear when the listener is separated from the source by a physical barrier.
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6.30 pm
Les Extraordinaires mésaventures de la jeune fille de pierre by Gabriel Abrantes, France, Portugal, 2019, 20’
vo: French; sub: English, Italian
Italian premiere
Tired of being trivial and ornamental, a statue comes to life at night and flees the Louvre for the streets of Paris. With eloquent special effects and animation, Abrantes mixes irony, emotion and political involvement in this short film full of pop aesthetics and surreal atmospheres.
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7.00 pm
The Proposal by Jill Magid, USA, 2018, 82’
vo: English; sub: Italian
Italian premiere
American artist Jill Magid’s film traces her project intended to merge into an exhibition inspired by the work of Mexican visionary architect Luis Barragàn. The artist faced many difficulties in consulting Barragàn’s archives in Mexico City and Basel, especially with Federica Manco, who owns the Swiss archive and the rights associated with the reproduction of the architect’s work in Switzerland.
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9.00 pm
Nelson – Jorit e il condominio dei diritti by Omar Rashid, Italy, 2019, 32’
vo: Italian; sub: English
World premiere in the presence of the author
In 2018 a huge murales for the facade of an apartment building in Piazza Leopoldo, Florence has been commissioned to Neapolitan street artist Jorit. In a densely populated area, under the eyes of all, the artist used a movable scaffold to paint Nelson Mandela’s face of over 15 metres. The video records the phases of the execution and the mastery of the artist and the inhabitants’ enthusiastic reactions.

from 8.30 pm
Jorit VR
Thanks to virtual reality it will be possible to relive the realisation of the work alongside Jorit. The experience lasts 3 minutes, and reservations are required at the Festival information desk from 5.30 pm.
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10.00 pm
Cy Dear by Andrea Bettinetti, Italy, 2019, 92’
vo: Italian, English; sub: Italian
In the presence of the author
The film is a tribute to one of the most prolific and influential American artists of the 20th century. Cy Twombly, who died in Rome in 2011, was a painter, illustrator, sculptor and photographer. A contemporary of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, he lived most of his life between the United States and Italy. He influenced artists such as Jean Michel Basquiat, Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Clemente and Julian Schnabel.