Mariella De Bernardi

Shot between Italy and New York City, Warming Up is the journal of a season of creativity. The film-maker and his characters improvise scenes and sequences, and wonder how to make up a story as they go along. The recurring theme is how to make the world (or read it as) an imaginative place...

A series of migrants who at times narrate and impersonate shards of myths, among them the Great Goddess, the Virgin of Bach’s Magnificat, the Sulamite of Stockhausen’s Song of Solomon (“I am black but comely”), tales by Herodotus, Kafka, Villon (as set to music by Ezra Pound). Third part of the Flower of Eryngium cycle.

A conclusion and recapitulation of the Eryngium cycle, Coda deals directly with the theme of self-portraiture. The first shot alludes to the end of Erichvon Stroheim's Foolish Wives, where the corpse of the hero-director is dispatched in a man-hole. Other dramatic self-portraits follow: Caravaggio's Goliath, Dante's Sestina (read by the film-maker), and Dürer's Self-portrait with Eryngium. The abandoned villa of Migrazione is revisited. But the finale is hopeful.