Lo schermo dell’arte Film Festival 9th edition

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15

Sala Ferri, Palazzo Strozzi
11.00am – 1.00pm / 2.30pm – 4.30pm
VISIO. Artists presentation
in collaboration with Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi
The participating artists introduce the fundamental themes of their artistic practice in a 15-minute presentation at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16

Cinema La Compagnia
6.00pm
EXHIBITION OPENING
VISIO. Outside the Black Box
The exhibition presents 12 works as an overview of a new generation of visual artists working with moving images in Europe.

Cinema La Compagnia
9.00pm
OPENING NIGHT
Where is Rocky II? by Pierre Bismuth, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, 2016, 93’
language: English; subtitles: Italian
Italian premiere in the presence of the author
French artist Pierre Bismuth hires a private investigator, specialized in murders and robberies, to find a work created in 1979 by renowned American artist Ed Ruscha: Rocky II, an artificial boulder hidden among real ones in the Mojave desert in California, which remained unnoticed for almost forty years. A brilliant film, not without irony, in which documentary and fiction coexist and intertwine until they merge.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17

Cinema La Compagnia
11.00am – 3.00pm
EXHIBITION
VISIO. Outside the Black Box

Cinema La Compagnia
3.45pm
FESTIVAL TALK
Pierre Bismuth
in collaboration with l’Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze

Cinema La Compagnia
6.00pm
SGUARDI
#ARTOFFLINE  by Manuel Correa, Norway, Colombia, Canada, 2015, 60’
language: English; subtitles: Italian
Italian premiere
The film frames the behavior of visitors to museum spaces and reflects on the role of the Internet and its ability to liberate the experience of art by showing images faithful to the originals anywhere and instantly. What will the role of museums be, when everything can be experienced online?

7.15pm
FOCUS ON
Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi
in the presence of the authors

Contacts: Mario Giacomelli, Italy, 1994, 13’
A portrait of Italian photographer Mario Giacomelli, produced for the celebrated series “Contacts” on French TV channel ARTE, with the photographer’s discreet commentary. The two authors approach with great sensitivity a work in which man is the principal subject.

Aria, Italy, 1993, 7’ 17”
Over Wagner’s Siegfried, the film blends archival material with scientific laboratory experiments, edited in parallel with the uttering of a butterfly. Science becomes a magic show.

Animali criminali, Italy, France, 1994, 7’ 6”
The authors tracked down this footage of animals from the archive of documentary filmmaker Luca Comerio (1878-1940). The animals are set before each other in a series of tableaux vivants and occasionally fight to the death, in an incredibly fierce mise en scène: in nature, all relationships are a merciless fight for survival. Music by Keith Ullrich.

Diario africano, Italy, France, 1994, mute, 8’
At the end of the 1920s, a traveler in Algeria records a film diary. The camera unabashedly presents indiscreet images of an androgynous youth and nude women. With Keith Ullrich’s hypnotic music, these images become a nightmare.

Film perduto, Italy, 2008, mute, 11’
Dedicated to Franco Basaglia, this film, remade by Gianikian in 2008 from negatives after the 1976 original was lost in London, contrasts archival images from a hospital near Turin – scientific photos of skin diseases prevalent in laborers and women who work in rice-paddies – with pictures of the corpses of soldiers.

Ti regalerò il mio ultimo respiro, Italy, 2009, 5’
The authors film their friend, actor Walter Chiari, recording his words, both tragic and comic, just before he underwent an operation on his vocal cords and lost his voice.

Notes sur nos voyages en Russie, Italy, 2010/2011, 15’
These Notes, narrated off-camera by Yervant Gianikian, accompany watercolors by Angela Ricci Lucchi, preparatory materials for a feature film still in production, dedicated to the poet Ossip Mandelstam, author of Voyage en Arménie, and to the last survivors of the Russian avant-garde of the 1930s and 40s.

9.00pm
CINEMA D’ARTISTA
Nightlife by Cyprien Gaillard, Germany, USA, 2015, 3D, sound, 14’ 55”
Italian premiere
Refined aesthetics, high-definition imagery, slow-motion footage and 3D projections: Cyprien Gaillard’s film is a nocturnal dance. Starting with Rodin’s Thinker in Cleveland, the film segues into Hollywood juniper bushes and spectacular reworks that move sinuously to the rocksteady beat of Alton Ellis’ music. Shot at night in the suburbs of Cleveland, Los Angeles and Berlin, natural elements are made to bear mysterious messages.

9.40pm
SGUARDI
Don’t Blink Robert Frank  by Laura Israel, Stati Uniti, 2015, 82’
language: English; subtitles: Italian
Italian premiere in the presence of the author
Robert Frank, now 91, revolutionized the conventional character of photography and independent cinema. The film tells of his life as an artist and as a man, drawing an extraordinary portrait, poetic and rough, comparable to the work of one of the most celebrated photographers of our time.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18

Cinema La Compagnia
11.00am – 5.00pm
EXHIBITION
VISIO. Outside the Black Box

Altana, Palazzo Strozzi
3.45pm
FESTIVAL TALK
Feature Expanded: Museum and Artists’ Feature Films Distribution and Exhibition
Round table with Joana Hadjithomas (artist), Jaap Guldemond (EYE Film Museum Amsterdam), Tobias Pausinger (co-founder Art:Film and Media Consultant). Moderated by Leonardo Bigazzi.
The roundtable explores new possibilities offered by non-theatrical distribution and the role of museums in the exhibition of artist feature films.

Cinema La Compagnia
6.00pm
SGUARDI
Eva Hesse  by Marcie Begleiter, USA, Germany, 2016, 108’
language: English; subtitles: Italian
Italian premiere
Eva Hesse is one of the most influential artists of the American post-war period. Her short career -she died of cancer at 34- contributed to minimalism in the 60s and 70s, and influenced a new generation of artists. The film, which links valuable documents such as diaries and personal correspondence, highlights the strong personality of a woman artist who managed to leave an indelible mark in New York, dominated by pop and minimalist male artists.

8.00pm
in collaboration with Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea L. Pecci on the occasion of the exhibition La fine del mondo
CINEMA D’ARTISTA
Faux Départ  di Yto Barrada, Marocco, 2015, sonoro, 23’
Italian premiere
Today more than 50,000 Moroccans make a living from counterfeiting and trading in fossils and minerals. The film questions the roots of our existence, the beginning of life on earth, and raises questions about the legitimacy of the forgery of prehistoric life forms, and emphasizes an unpredictable artistic aspect which may be hidden behind these mystifying skills.

9.00pm
CINEMA D’ARTISTA
Ismyrne by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Lebanon, France, AEU, 2016, 50’
language: French; subtitles: English, Italian
Italian premiere in the presence of Joana Hadjithomas
Joana Hadjithomas and Etel Adnan met fifteen years ago. Their bond of friendship derives from their common origin in the Turkish city of Smyrna (Izmir), which their families left after the fire of 1922. Together they imagine a possible return, which will only happen for Joana. The film investigates the concepts of identity and belonging, using old films to impress upon her eyes an image of New Smyrna and the sea, extended beyond earthly and imaginary boundaries.

10.15pm
CINEMA D’ARTISTA
Remainder  by Omer Fast, UK, 2015, 97’
language: English; subtitles: Italian
Italian premiere in the presence of the author
Remainder, based on the novel by Tom McCarthy, is a psycho-thriller, the first feature film by Israeli video artist Omer Fast. The protagonist, Tom Sturridge, after being hit in the head by an unidentified object, suffers total amnesia. He awakens from a coma and uses a series of dark memories to reconstruct every detail of his past. The film, which takes place in an endless loop, explores the theme of reality-unreality, creating a reflection on the ephemeral nature of the human mind.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19

Cinema La Compagnia
11.00am – 5.00pm
EXHIBITION
VISIO. Outside the Black Box

Cinema La Compagnia
6.00pm
CINEMA D’ARTISTA
The Right  by Assaf Gruber, Germany, Poland, 2015, 11’54’’
language: Polish; subtitles: English, Italian
Italian premiere in the presence of the author
This poetic film tells of an elderly security guard at the Zwinger Palace in Dresden, who asks to be transferred as a volunteer at the Museum Sztuki Lodz, in order to be nearer to the AR group (Revolutionary Artists), one of the most active avant-garde groups of the Polish left. The shots of the woman’s home environment reveal a subtle and acute confrontation with a museum’s exhibition programme, itself an unpredictable protagonist of the film.

6.30pm
CINEMA D’ARTISTA
A Brief History of Princess X  by Gabriel Abrantes, France, Portugal, UK, 2016, 7’
language: English; subtitles: Italian
Princess Marie Bonaparte, writer, psychoanalyst and pioneer of sexual freedom, was portrayed by the sculptor Constantin Brancusi in his famous work Princess X. In this provocative and prurient film, Abrantes talks ironically of the famous sculpture’s compositional history, keeping to the facts as they actually occurred.

6.45pm
Continuity  by Omer Fast, Germany, 2016, 85’
language: German; subtitles: English, Italian
Italian premiere in the presence of the author
A young German soldier returns home from Afghanistan. His parents welcome him, but family unity soon give way to disquieting disorientation. The camcorder focuses on details and domestic rituals without the usual emotional freight. The curtain rises on a story whose multiple narrative paths constitute the backbone of a film with all the flavour of psychodrama.

9.00 pm
CINEMA D’ARTISTA
Sudan by Luca Trevisani, Italy, 2016, sound, 15’
European premiere in the presence of the author
Sudan lives in Kenya, protected by armed guards. He’s the last white rhino, the only one of his species to have survived extermination by poachers. The film is a profound moral analysis of the relationship between man and nature through investigation of ‘sculptural’ Sudan, a mortal work of art moving slowly on its way to extinction.

9.40pm
Feature Expanded Distribution Award
Feature Expanded Development Award
Ottod’Ame Film Award

to follow
SGUARDI
Hockney  by Randall Wright, UK, 2014, 112’
language: English; subtitles: Italian
Italian premiere
A portrait of one of the greatest living painters, who, in prudish 1960s America, spoke openly of his homosexuality through his highly personal and disruptive work. Randall Wright, thanks to Hockney’s own direct testimony, constructs a film which winds through period footage and an exclusive tour of the artist’s personal archive, between Los Angeles and his Yorkshire studio.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20

Cinema La Compagnia
11.00am – 5.00pm
EXHIBITION
VISIO. Outside the Black Box

6.00pm
SGUARDI
La Cupola  by Volker Sattel, Germany, 2016, 40’
language: Italian, German; subtitles: English, Italian
In the presence of the author
Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti commissioned architect Dante Bini to design their secret holiday home in a remote area of Sardinia. Its dome-shape is formed by a thin cement produced through an innovative technique named for Bini: Binishell. The history of the house, surrounded by nature, is narrated by Giuseppina Isetta, who witnessed its construction. Today this charming structure is headed towards an inexorable decline.

7.00pm
CINEMA D’ARTISTA
Black Code/Code Noir  by Louis Henderson, UK, France, 2015, 21’
language: English, French; subtitles: English, Italian
Louis Henderson’s work is a meditation on contemporary racism: from the words of Malcolm X, through animist thought during the Haitian Revolution, up to cellphone images caught during the murder of two African Americans by police in Missouri, in 2014. The artist composes a visual narrative using archive material, images downloaded from the Internet and footage he filmed himself.

7.30pm
In collaboration with BIM Biennale de l’image en mouvement, Geneve
and Palazzo Grassi – Punta della Dogana
CINEMA D’ARTISTA
The Challenge  by Yuri Ancarani, Italy, 2016, 69’
The Challenge recounts a falconer’s journey to a major competition in the Qatari desert. In 2016, after three years of filming, artist Yuri Ancarani’s first feature film crosses the Arabian Gulf -where leopards ride in Lamborghinis, hawks are transported by private jets, and motors are gold-plated-documents contemporary Arab culture, in which luxury has no limits.

9.00pm
VISIO Young Talent Acquisition Prize

9.20pm
CINEMA D’ARTISTA
SEL  by Rebecca Digne, France, 2016, sound, 4’
Italian premiere in the presence of the author
Rebecca Digne presents a film whose content, form and preparation show an economy based on exchange and barter. The film was an opportunity for the artist to experiment with a new mode of production: shooting was carried out in collaboration with some of the video-artists she met during the 2015 edition of VISIO, gathered under the label “Elevator Production”.

9.45pm
in collaboration with Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi on the occasion of the exhibition Ai Weiwei. Libero
SGUARDI
The Chinese Lives of Uli Sigg by Michael Schindhelm, Swiss, China, Germany, 2016, 93’
language: German, Chinese, English; subtitles: English, Italian
in the presence of the author
Swiss businessman Uli Sigg spent much of the last forty years in China, becoming the best-known collector of contemporary Chinese art. Convinced that “creativity is a country’s only inexhaustible resource”, he was among the first to recognize the value of the work by artists like Ai Weiwei, Wang Guangyi, Fang Lijun, Zeng Fanzhi and Cao Fei. The film collects his account of those experiences, interviews many of the artists close to him, and ends at the construction site of the future M + museum, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, which will open in 2019 in Hong Kong to house most of his collection.