6/08/2009

Ready for the avant-garde Italian style? (part 1)

From “Verification Uncertain” (La Verficica Incerta)
by Alberto Grifi and Gianfranco Baruchello

I’m attending a two day film event conducted by Bruno di Marino, a film scholar, media specialist, film events curator. In two 3 hour sessions he presents 100 years of the Italian experimental film.

The selection of clips is fantastic: all are fresh and inspiring. An example? In 1909 Giacomo Rust made “Storia di Lulu” - a story told shooting only feet of a village girl who enters city life. It seems pretty bold for 1909. In comparison we look lame with our tired and used up ways of visual narrating.

Even with the present film language openness, we are still trapped in the old. Yet the audience appears to yearn for new ways of storytelling. Some filmmakers push the boundaries with success, mostly in the area of editing and pacing (for example the Bourne series, “24 hours” , or earlier “NYPD Blue”). Yet other ares of the film making craft seem old.

The above pictured “La Verifica Incerta” (1964) is made with the “second hand” footage. Clips from Hollywood films are assembled in a provoking, challenging the “norm” way. No narration in a traditional way is offered, yet the emotional dimension is clear and mesmerizing.

Most of the film clips presented by Bruno di Marino contain ideas that, if incorporated into a mainstream storytelling today, would be accepted as fresh and could be “bought” by the general public.

Why don’t we do it? Why don’t we return to the great work of experimental filmmakers? Why don’t we try to bring it to the multiplex “near you”? The time is ripe for such an attempt.

Tomorrow, the 9th of June that is there is going to be the second part of this event. SWPS (Warsaw School of Social Psychology) 5PM.

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