This brief film, it seems to me to exist, finally, as if I had found it somewhere completely forgotten, as if it had been some unsuccessful pre-cinematic experiment. All animations were constructed from photographs from a huge book. Finally, she dies and is found, in a simulation as if it were a simulation; as if I, with my movie camera, had been the first one to enter the room where she died. —Paolo Gioli
Paolo Gioli was born in Sarzano (Rovigo) on October 12, 1942. Beginning in 1960 he centered his artistic activities in Venice where he attended the Scuola Libera del Nudo, part of the Accademia di Belle Arti. In 1967, he travelled to New York, where he received a study grant from the John Cabot Foundation and met gallerists Leo Castelli and Martha Jackson. In New York he would also discover the “New American Cinema.” In 1968, he returned to Italy. Starting in 1970, he would center his activities around Rome, where he came into contact with the Cooperativa Cinema Indipendente. Moving between Rovigo and Rome, he would produce his first films, that he would develop himself using his movie camera as a laboratory, following in the footsteps of the Lumière brothers. In 1976, he moved to Milan, where besides working in cinema, he would make sustained investigations of photography. And from the beginning of the 1980s, Gioli would receive his first important recognition for his activities in… read more