Le feste senza fine

Three months in the life of Chiara, an actress pushing forty and trying to find her way in a bustling Rome overrun by tourists. Invisible, precarious, Chiara restlessly piles up one experience after another, searching for the thing that will make her feel alive.

It's an event that draws many thousands of music lovers to one of the most beautiful cities in the world every summer: the opera season at the ancient Arena di Verona. The 2,000-year-old roman amphiteatre with its gigantic stage dimensions is one of the largest and best preserved Roman construction of its kind, and with over 22,000 seats it is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular open-air venues of the world! The revered master of opera Franco Zeffirelli, who died shortly before the premiere of Il Trovatore, created a legendary scenery with groups of giant sized armoured knights, a fortress turning into a luminous cathedral, an enormous choir, horses, breathtaking fights: “his perhaps best arena production” (Opernglas). It brings Anna Netrebko to the Arena of Verona where she is giving her much-anticipated debut in one of Giuseppe Verdi’s most popular operas.

For Filmmaker Film Festival (2023), Fulvio Baglivi and Cristina Piccino asked some filmmakers (R. Beckermann, J. Bressane, D’Anolfi/Parenti, T. De Bernardi, L. Di Costanzo, A. Fasulo, F. Ferraro, M. Frammartino, S. George, ghezzi/Gagliardo, C. Hintermann, G. Maderna, A. Momo, A. Rossetto, M. Santini, C. Simon, S. Savona) to give us their own "lost road," that is, a sequence, scene or piece of editing that did not later find its way into the final version of one of their works. Each fragment has its own accomplished presence, often has a different title from the film it was made for, which is not necessary to have seen in order to find meaning; on the contrary, those who set out thinking they know the world they are walking through will find themselves displaced.

A girl goes up a river from the mouth, backwards, perhaps in search of a place or fleeing from something... Among wolves and mysterious glances she will find someone who will give her refuge and who, in turn, will ask her for help...

Corso Salani's voice for "Dove sono stato", a film about the disappearance of a friend, is now embodied in the places where he should have starred in a film. Empty fields, which will forever miss the body of the missing friend, to document the absence and listen once again to a dear voice.

I have always looked for evidence of a lived time in a shaky shot or in unusable queues, or in the temporal dilation of a fragment. With Notturno this research continues within the image, penetrating it, running the pleasant risk of getting lost within it.

The voices, faces and bodies of the students of the Liceo Artistico Mengaroni in Pesaro embody the characters of two novels by Cesare Pavese, La bella estate and Il diavolo in collina. Seventy years later, the "beautiful summers" of Ginia and Guido, Amelia and Poli, Oreste, Pieretto, are staged by contemporary bodies who read Pavese's words and discover the closeness of the themes addressed by the author to their own experience, feeling the emotions that the staging of some episodes of the two works arouses in them.

Carmaux and Wan Stiller, Mimmo and Sussò fishermen from the Old City, are looking for the Lady of Ventimiglia, here Carmela. An elderly and visionary Morgan sent them among childhood memories, fears of new imprisonments and adverse destinies, chatter in an arcane and mysterious language. The (free) life of today's pirates in the beautiful city of Taranto. Inspired by Jolanda, the daughter of the Black Corsair by Emilio Salgari.

Discreetly following the restoration work carried out in the piano nobile of the Ducal Palace of Urbino, Le opere, i giorni enters the bustling life of the construction site, taking viewers behind the scenes of a three-year process marked by uncertainties, discoveries, and transformations. An unprecedented, in medias res perspective from which to glimpse the enchanting harmony of one of the most significant sites of the Italian Renaissance.

"Dove Sono Stato" is a film that tells of the sudden disappearance of a man during a trip and of a friend who follows in his footsteps. All footage was filmed in Portugal in 1994; I wrote the text and edited the video in the early months of 2000 following obligatory passages, already existing faces and places to which I gave a role and a time that was foreign to them: unaware, and false, traveling companions.

"Giorno di Scuola" is the story of a day for pupils at the Pieve Torina primary school: the morning school bus that collects the children on the hills, the hours of lessons with syllables and questions, recess with its meetings; but also the contrast between the carefreeness of a normal school day and the surrounding difficulties, evident in the walk of a class outside the school. Hour after hour, "Giorno di Scuola" becomes the portrait of women and men of the near future who, caught in the act of learning, in turn give a lesson in lightness and teaching to see with new eyes, to observe the horizon from the of a school desk.

A short, but white is the screen: and in the screen the shapes are formed by deforming themselves.

"If in 'Di Ritorno' the movement leads to a well-defined place (the childhood home) even if it is no longer present, in 'Dietro i Vetri ' you get lost among the colours, the memories. The journey, without a declared destination, dissolves, like the cloud beyond the window..."

'Da Lontano' continues the research on the inner journey, a journey into an indefinite space and place. The images belong to the past or to a time to come; and an elsewhere pushes to show itself and present themselves in the form of light, whispered voices, flapping of wings...

Vaghe stelle is a seven-chaptered film, conceived as a musical album and composed of seven movements, which can be watched singly (like songs), or in the established order (like a record) or also mixing the films…

Behind a dark window, the childhood home, time is rediscovered. A woman runs into the sunny air ... it is a blast, a color, a reflection of water ... By the sea, one encounters people and things lost.