Ugo Nespolo

The film challenges the aura of the artwork, pushing it towards performance in urban space. During the exhibition Con-temp-l’azione (1967–68), at the three galleries Stein, Sperone and Il punto, two works by Michelangelo Pistoletto are taken out into the street. The film marks the beginning of a more militant and performative phase in Pistoletto’s career, opening up possible references to Situationism, Fluxus and nouveau réalisme. The film starts with Pistoletto shaving in front of one of his ‘mirrors’: the codes of everyday life and advertising burst into the scene. The large ball of newspapers roams Turin in a convertible automobile. The music of The Beatles accompanies the exploration of different filming and editing techniques. Intense, amused and brilliant, Buongiorno Michelangelo suggests a performative, cooperative and perhaps also playful aspect of the attitude of this short and intense period. —Tate Modern

Experimental film by Ugo Nespolo.

Experimental short by Ugo Nespolo.

From 1967 to 1969 Ugo Nespolo made three films about three artist friends: Mario Merz, Alighiero Boetti and Michelangelo Pistoletto. Neonmerzare, featuring Merz, was shot in the gallery of Gian Enzo Sperone in Turin, in 1968. With lyrical movements, the camera tracks a series of neon tubes, establishing an ideal dialogue between the traditions of the abstract cinema of light and colour, and experimental documentary filmmaking. The symphony of lights is accompanied by jazz improvisation by the saxophonist Carlo Actis Dato. —Tate Modern

Valerio Rossello is a judge, with a rigid and uncompromising mentality. He is married to Lucia, a woman who instead follows the model of a loving and protective mother. From their union only one child was born: Maurizio. Both parents raise him completely differently, highlighting their character differences. Until the day when Maurizio, now a teenager, together with a friend commits an attack for futile reasons against a gas station attendant. Having learned of the incident, Valerio and Lucia also in this case intend to face the situation in a diametrically opposite way. The conflicts within the family thus strongly resurface, in which, amidst rebounds of responsibility, the errors of both parents emerge in the upbringing of their child.

Dressed in military uniforms characters are engaged in the pursuit of a woman, during which they shamelessly expose their nudity.