Yuyan Wang, My views on the Darkness, 2023. Video stills. Courtesy the artist, Lo schermo dell’arte, and FRAC Bretagne
The first previews on the programme
The Focus section of this year's Festival is dedicated to Guido van der Werve
Artists Diego Marcon, Rabih Mroué, and Amie Siegel will attend the Festival
Among the documentaries: the ephemeral art of Robert Irwin and the radical architecture of Fabrizio Fiumi
The VISIO Production Fund previews new works by Simon Liu, Gerard Ortín Castellví, Maryam Tafakory and Yuyan Wang and offers €30,000 to support young artists.
The Sixteenth Edition of Lo Schermo dell’Arte returns to Florence to offer the public a selection of the most recent international productions of artists’ films and documentaries on contemporary art.
The Cinema La Compagnia in Florence will, as always, be the center of the Festival, not only the venue for its intense program of screenings, including world and Italian premieres in the presence of the authors, but also a meeting place for artists, curators and international guests.
Also this edition will expand online, with streaming programming on PiùCompagnia in collaboration with MYmovies until November 26, 2023.
The Focus is dedicated to the twenty-year career of the Dutch director and artist Guido van der Werve (1977), an exceptional personality in the art scene – as well as a composer, chess player, marathon runner and extreme sports practitioner – van der Werve uses video and performance to confront life and its limits, in a continuous challenge with himself and research of identity.
The opening night of the Festival will present the Italian premiere of Nummer Achttien – The Breath of Life (2023), the first feature film shot by van der Werve for the cinema. The work, which the artist defines as “autofiction”, recounts van der Werve’s extraordinary rehabilitation following the serious accident he suffered in 2016, a return to life which is an opportunity to retrace the childhood of a special child, who has drawn from diversity the ability to persevere and survive.
The Focus includes a review of the artist’s works created between 2003 and 2012 as well as a lecture by him.
As part of the 2023 edition of the Festival, VISIO-European Programme on Artists’ Moving Images also returns. The project, curated by Leonardo Bigazzi, is dedicated to artists under 35 who use moving images. The 12th Edition confirms its support for the production of new works by young artists through the VISIO Production Fund, a production fund worth 30,000 euros financed in partnership with Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci (Prato), Fondazione In Between Art Film (Rome), and FRAC Bretagne (Rennes). The open call that will lead to the selection of Italian and international artists who will be in residence in Florence during the Festival and the three new works that will be produced and presented in 2024 at Lo Schermo dell’Arte continues until July 21st.
The world premieres of the works created thanks to the support of the VISIO Production Fund 2022 by the artists Simon Liu (1987, Hong Kong), Gerard Ortín Castellví (1988, Spain), Maryam Tafakory (1987, Iran) and Yuyan Wang (1989, China) will be part of the programme of this edition.
Among the other screenings scheduled with the authors present, one of the Italian artists who, among the new generations, have distinguished themselves most on the international scene for the experimental use of video, will return to Lo Schermo dell’Arte: Diego Marcon (1985), with a special selection of works on the occasion of his one-man exhibition Glassa, hosted by the Centro Pecci from September 30, 2023 to February 4, 2024.
The American artist Amie Siegel (1974), who presented her film Provenance in 2014, returns to Lo Schermo dell’Arte with her latest work Bloodlines (2022), a film that investigates the relationship between the private and public dimension of the artistic heritage, creating a social portrait through the life of works and objects.
The Lebanese visual artist, director and actor Rabih Mroué (1967) will bear witness to his political commitment and activism with The Pixelated Revolution (2012), a live non-academic lecture which, starting from the images of Syrian protesters found on the web, investigates the forms of repression exercised by power in the era of smartphones.
Lo Schermo dell’Arte will also present a selection of some of the most recent documentaries on art, the lives of artists and more, also entering the field of architecture and design.
Among these, the Italian premiere of Robert Irwin: A Desert Of Pure Feeling (2022) by Jennifer Lane, in which the Californian artist Robert Irwin (1928) recounts his artistic journey and his ephemeral installations of light and space, up to his latest project for the desert landscape of Marfa in Texas.
Radical Landscapes (2022) by Elettra Fiumi, daughter of Fabrizio Fiumi – one of the founders of the 9999 Group as well as of the Florence Film Festival – will be an opportunity to relive the ferment of the Florentine Radical Architecture Movement. The director uses the camera to orient herself in the discovery of her father’s archive, bringing out all the visionary character of his thought and architecture.
