Welcome Palermo

In 2018, for Manifesta 12 in Palermo, artistic duo MASBEDO transformed an old van into Videomobile, a laboratory on wheels. 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 Palermo’s mayor Leoluca Orlando, princess Vittoria Alliata di Villafranca e Valguarnera, daughter of Francesco Alliata, founder of the film production company Alliata Films, musicologist Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, nephew of the writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Sister Cornelia of San Paolo Film who selected films for distribution in the parish cinema circuit, alternate with archival material and performances by artists (writers, DJs) and ordinary Palermo citizens who recite questions on sexuality asked by Pier Paolo Pasolini in his film Comizi d’amore. In Welcome Palermo MASBEDO recharges the memory of a city inextricably linked to Italian cinema through figures who worked anonymously or marginally, and through prominent directors such as Vittorio De Sica, Ugo Gregoretti, Luchino Visconti. The film ends with a Tamhil dance in the ballroom of Palermo’s Palazzo Gangi, the set of the final scene of Gattopardo.