This is a “sublimation“ film of notes, watercolours, travel diaries. In 1989-90, we filmed the last survivors of the Russian avant-garde movements of the 1920s and ’30s in Leningrad-Saint Petersburg, the city of Osip Emil’evic Mandel’štam – the author of the poem Journey to Armenia. The film is a fragment of a vast fresco recorded during the fall of the Soviet Union, with the portraits of the last witnesses of a great history that no-one had registered and who are now dead. –Venice Film Festival
Angela Ricci Lucchi & Yervant Gianikian (Lugo di Romagna, Italy, 1942 / Merano, Italy, 1942) both live in Milan. Angela Ricci Lucchi, who trained as a painter, and Yervant Gianikian, who trained as an architect, have been working together as filmmakers since the 1970s. Their productions are the result of a special treatment of old nitrate film material. Following extensive archival research, the chosen film fragments are subjected to coloring, a re-editing of the sequences, and changes in velocity. After these changes, the films offer a clearer insight into the leading interests of the artists: technicalization, fascism, colonialism, war, and forced migration. —Witte de With
Angela Ricci Lucchi & Yervant Gianikian (Lugo di Romagna, Italy, 1942 / Merano, Italy, 1942) both live in Milan. Angela Ricci Lucchi, who trained as a painter, and Yervant Gianikian, who trained as an architect, have been working together as filmmakers since the 1970s. Their productions are the result of a special treatment of old nitrate film material. Following extensive archival research, the chosen film fragments are subjected to coloring, a re-editing of the sequences, and changes in velocity. After these changes, the films offer a clearer insight into the leading interests of the artists: technicalization, fascism, colonialism, war, and forced migration. —Witte de With
The Ferronis take our end of the year double feature extravaganza to delirious heights.
