Inconscio italiano is an essay film which moves from the dramatic experience of the Ethiopian occupation to reflections on the very origins of Italian identity. Divided into two parts, the film gives voice to six intellectuals: historians Angelo del Boca and Lucia Ceci, anthropologists Iain Chambers and Michela Fusaschi and philosophers Alberto Burgio and Ida Dominijanni. Each speaker analyses Fascist Italy’s colonial past, slipping into reflections on current-day Italy. Then the screen opens onto an editing suite which investigates, as it destructures the idea of the regime’s propaganda documentaries, into that which remained veiled in those images, and delves into the visible and the invisible and, once again, into the subconscious. –Locarno Film Festival
Filmmaker and stage director, screenwriter and producer, Luca Guadagnino was born in Palermo in 1971. He graduated from La Sapienza University in Rome with a thesis on Jonathan Demme. In 1999, he made his first feature film The Protagonists, a strange film that defied categorization. The Protagonists was selected for Venice. Some years later he directed Mundo civilizado (2003), screened at Locarno. In 2004 he made Cuoco contadino, selected for the Cinema Digitale section at Venice. His following film, Melissa P. (2005), was a hit, despite arousing controversy. In 2009 he received international acclaim for I Am Love. His most recent film, Inconscio italiano (2011), is screening at Locarno this year in the section Fuori concorso. –Locarno Film Festival