Gianluca Abbate

A personal story set against the backdrop of the 1980 Irpinia earthquake, narrated by a father to his son. This event becomes a universal paradigm for exploring the story of those who were forced to leave their homes and migrate. People are intrinsically linked to places, and these places hold the memory of those who inhabited them.

Panorama is the first chapter of a trilogy on the city. The video is a review on a polis that stretches away over an infinite global space with no more uninhabited places nor frontiers where we can take refuge. In this landscape we cannot see any way of readmission for those who have once been excluded, and this recalls imaginary worlds in search of a balance.

A summer evening twenty-five years ago: the city is deserted, the final of the FIFA World Cup is underway. A woman, Teresa, comes down to the Tiber and lets herself be carried away by its current. She is swallowed by the river and her daughter Virginia crosses Rome in the dark of the night: she wants to find her and save her. Virginia has to make her way through the depths of the waters, of the history, myths, calamities and gleams of life of a timeless Rome. And so she is able to see again her mother, who emerges from the darkness of the Tiber to fly toward AMOR, “the planet of care” surrounded by water where the streets, squares and fountains remind her of Rome and animals are free to wander around.

Panorama is the first chapter of a trilogy about the city. A review of a polis extended over an infinite space without uninhabited places or borders to take refuge. A landscape without readmission for the excluded, like imaginary worlds in search of balance.

Everyday digital devices are no longer just tools; they have become gateways to a new multi-layered reality, an exponentially growing augmented universe that we experience largely without a physical connection. As human beings made of flesh, we now spend most of our time in a digital landscape, seeking happiness, wealth, relationships, knowledge, and experiences. What is today’s reality made of?

A voice says 'I would like to make you feel nice and comfortable, and to empty your mind of every single thought...' Thus begins the story, with an invitation to make you fall asleep, in a calm, deep, and peaceful rest, while a chaotic landscape, crowded with people, sets up on the screen. The crowd doesn't seem to have anywhere to go, but they are actually sleeping and they need to dream.

A collapsing cave on a caving expedition turns into a death trap for a group of girls and boys who are exploring it. Trapped in the bowels of the earth and shrouded in darkness, the group is forced to take a grisly count: some must be eaten in order for the others to survive.

For the aesthetic elegance of digital animation with which he infuses plasticity and three-dimensionality to Pasolini's faces, glimpses and shots accompanied by the imaginative lyricism of the virtuosic cinema of his poetic texts and his prose.