A contemporary swagger
The direction of the Festival, now in its second edition (although it was preceded in 2022 by a bold number 0), wrote the delightful introductory notes that follow. For that matter, the creator on behalf of the Audiovisu-al Archive Luca Ricciardi and the artistic direction booth formed by the tried-and-true couple Alina Marazzi and Marco Bertozzi have carefully described the nature of the days that renew the activities of the appointment.
UnArchive has become a permanent institutional deadline. It is fully added to the traditional programming of the Aamod Agenda: the Prize named after Cesare Zavatti-ni, the Aperossa, The Project and Forms of a Political Cinema, the Palestinian Cineforum, and the residency for artists Suoni e Visioni. To mention the best-known chapters of the annual schedule.
Over time, that is, in the preparatory stages of the two editions, UnArchive’s cultural thread of absolute and swaggering contemporaneity grew. The thread has developed, following trajectories in the early days that were perhaps unimaginable.
The reuse of archived and thus unarchived materials has nothing to do, now, with the albeit very noble en-terprise of the re-reading of history told in pictures. . Certainly, it is also about that. But the peculiarity has gradually been refined: footage is the premise for the construction of reality rendered – thanks to the running backward and forward in time – much truer and deeper than mere naturalistic explora-tion.
The traces and symptoms – offered by the vision of the precious goods kept in the archives – transition from the old to the new, take us by the hand and break through roofs or walls delivered by the analog age.
The mash-up effect of text hybridization in the digital age becomes resounding as quantity is transformed in-to an aesthetic subsequent to the styles of classical modernity and pure technological determinism
A huge game is being played in the universe of algo-rithms and artificial intelligence, where the mere de-construction of the real can and should be countered by a multipolarity of viewpoints capable of broadening cognitive statutes.
The Festival contains numerous components, from re-views to exhibitions, competition, lectures and master-classes, and much more.
With such valuable experience, Aamod intends to take a leap forward in its research and the very identity in progress that accompanies its history.
It seeks, in fact, to become a complex platform in which the established areas of up-to-date heritage pro-tection and the provision of content marked by a pow-erful general intellect coexist.
We thank Archivio Luce Cinecittà, il Ministero della cultura con la Direzione generale Cinema e Audiovisivo and the invaluable group that collaborated in the construction of the days.
And credit must be given to the entire Aamod collec-tive, starting with the board of directors, for believing in a tenacious and enlightened mole that will dig into the framework of existing offerings, helping to make the thinking that too often pervades them less homog-enized and unique.
UnArchive intends to be, in fact, a place of reflection and reference of a free and independent discussion about what we can call by the name we prefer: art, in the age of its technical hyper-reproducibility. I wonder if Walter Benjamin will appreciate it. Anyway, without him we would still be at the pure fig-urative mirror.
In short, creativity is not a contemplation, but an es-sential tool of class struggle in the imaginary.
Vincenzo Vita
AAMOD President
An archive cubed
As we approach the second edition of UnArchive Found Footage Fest, our thoughts go back to its first trial in May 2023 (actually preceded by a “number zero” just a year earlier), which was, for the Audiovisual Archive of the Democratic and Labour Movement and for all those who collaborated in imagining and building it, accompanied by a strong feeling of “endeavour” at first, and then of surprise.
The endeavour was that of imagining a festival that would be unique in its kind, and would finally meet a demand that was widespread among artists, cultural operators, scholars and – this was the biggest challenge – the public.
The surprise came when the festival started, when the extraordinary nature of this debut was revealed, and we were overwhelmed, beyond our best expectations, by the enthusiasm of a large – even very young – and lively audience, by the enthusiastic reception of critics and by a surprising and active participation of many artists and operators.
It was the confirmation of a mature and consolidated wave, which has been growing in recent years and in different arenas: in the many experiences of research cinema, in the practices of video art, in the proposals of performers and musicians, in academic research and studies and, of course, also in the growing reflection of the many, small and large, archives of images across Italy and around the world, increasingly aware of the “exponential” value of the collections they preserve.
In those days, it was said in the press that, if films were mathematical objects, UnArchive would be a festival squared. (F. Ferzetti, L’Espresso, April 30 2023). Of course, films are not geometric constructs, and certainly “ours” are not, so full of humanity, research, attempts and crossovers as they are. But the metaphor of a cinema squared captures the deep meaning of the creative reuse of images and highlights the reasons that leads an archival institution of cinema and audiovisual such as ours to support this practice decisively.
The intuition of considering reuse practices as processes that multiply meanings recalls the situationist idea of Détournement and of the specific strength that the “diverted” elements possess because of the “coexistence in them of their ancient and immediate meaning: their false bottom”.
Cinema squared is an inspired and fitting definition that binds together the different artistic practices that UnArchive wants to promote and make known. A cinema – and not only – that feeds on the images of the past, recontextualizing them and giving them new life, new meanings, without cancelling the original one. Images that are new and at the same time ancient. Signs and lines that generate complex and free geometries, false bottoms, augmented visions. Layered readings, capable of reworking the traces left by time in aesthetic and political processes that are absolutely contemporary. Perspectives, therefore, rather than retrospectives.
Here lies the ambition – that of being an “archive of the present” – which is at the centre of the cultural policies of the Audiovisual Archive of the Democratic and Labour Movement, in a continuous, cyclical effort of archiving – unarchiving – archiving. If found footage cinema is cinema squared, the archive that promotes it, first asserting itself, then denying itself, and then asserting itself again, ideally without interruption, could be defined as an archive cubed. An archive that aims at avoiding every form of institutionalization of images and any risk of musealization, constantly reconfiguring its audiovisual heritage, updating it and, because of this, maintaining it alive, always.
Luca Ricciardi
Concept and managing directior
Burning cinema sets fire to the borders between the poetic and the political
Making a film using archive footage does not mean seizing the life that sleeps in the forts of the film libraries, but stripping reality of its appearance, restoring its raw aspect that is enough in itself while at the same time looking for the aspect it will end with.
Apparently complex, this statement by Jean-Luc Godard published in 1963 in the «Cahiers du Cinéma», upon a second reading strikes us for its crystalline “truth”. An invitation, almost a prophecy, that we make our own in launching the second edition of UnArchive, the Festival dedicated to the cinema that scrutinizes, questions, rekindles, sometimes overturns its own sources. It is the vast and multifaceted landscape of found footage, an iconic horizon that is constantly changing because it houses a multitude of materials, imaginaries, media and technologies. During the preparation for the 2024 program, we were surprised to see films that differ greatly, not only for the themes and time period of the repertoires, but also for the different practices adopted and the aesthetics embraced. The authors fatefully become involved, sometimes in person, other times taking on the point of view of third parties, be they collective or anonymous; other times they strive towards invisibility, touching on cinema-eye perspectives or using images from surveillance cameras. Here the sweetly imperfect gaze of private images gives way to the alienating panoptic eye of closed-circuit images or videos from the media, just as the first-person narration of the narrating voice alternates with soundscapes composed of found and machine-generated sounds.
Because the artist-filmmaker’s research breaks apart the given referential point of view of the starting material, questioning the immediate representation and opening gaps within which new readings and new meanings may be placed. The “artisan” of found footage disassembles and reassembles, paints and scratches, recolours, cuts, pastes, overlays and strips, in search of that aspect invoked by Godard’s words. Thus, in the UnArchive panorama, the concept of re-appropriation of archive material branches into a détournement that goes from deconstruction to decolonization of gaze, gender and cultural identity, in tune with the driving energy of today’s most fervent reflections.
There are eleven titles in the feature film competition. Films with porous boundaries, capable of expressing unbridled creativity, non-stereotyped looks from different continents and cultural identities. Personal stories that intertwine shared experiences, conditions and changes; or powerful collective narratives that take the form of glances experienced by individuals. The short film competition is instead made up of twelve titles: once again with greatly different themes and origins, but also with a greater variety of linguistic experimentation and techniques adopted. Out of competition there are two of the most important contemporary authors of this cinema, Sergei Loznitsa and Eyal Sivan, who will be holding a Masterclass and will also be presenting, respectively, The Kiev Trial, the opening film of the festival, and The Specialist: Portrait of a Modern Criminal, on its 25th anniversary. Invaluable, in this historical moment, is also the presence of the Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari, with three of his works.
To the sections that were present in the first edition, Frontiere – on the geographical and aesthetic crossovers of found footage – and Panorami Italiani – a showcase of practices and poetics in Italian found footage – we have added Processi d ‘archivio, a focus on films that reuse images of court “proceedings”, works pierced by heartfelt looks, in the halls of international courts. Returning this year are also some treasures from the Centre Pompidou archive, with carte blanche given to Philippe-Alain Michaud; and Decasia, the film-manifesto by Bill Morrison – who was awarded last year, is member of this year’s jury, and author of two new films presented at UnArchive – will also be back.
While the collaboration with the Dutch festival IDFA and its ReFrame Award is renewed, we inaugurate a new collaboration with the MUTA – Festival Internacional de Apropiación Audiovisual de Lima; from each of these festivals come titles that broaden our gazes on the “cinema that burns”. What else? Riuso di classe is a showcase of works made by film schools, universities, academies and artistic residences, while Aamod Reloaded presents some of the most interesting live performances produced by Aamod in single-channel form.
But the Festival also lives outside the halls of the Intrastevere cinema First of all, just beside it, in Vicolo Moroni, with a site-specific installation by the artist Caterina Borelli. Then with the original Live Performance nights at the Alcazar – where works focused on the interaction between archive images and live music are presented – and inside the extraordinary Tempietto del Bramante, at the Accademia di Spagna, where UnArchive//Expanded will be once again and will host Studio Azzurro, the Italian collective of pioneering video artists, with two magical recycling works, The editor’s bin and Iconic Roots.
At the Accademia di Spagna, there will be other moments of reflection with both the panel The located image. Thoughts and archival practices between feminism and decoloniality – with speeches by artists, researchers, and theorists of a transnational thought that is challenging heavy legacies and cultural dominations through a review of archives and of consolidated imaginaries; as well as with the now traditional talk on the styles and poetics of found footage, in a round table that hosts the directors present at the Festival.
With UnArchive we start from the naked life of images to break the limits of what is visible. Thanks to hybrid and thinking films, live performances, close meetings at the Accademia di Spagna, our festival miraculously remains outside the institutional logic of inescapable premieres, and far from catwalks and red carpets. We explore border landscapes, far from the control towers of genres, where “the cinema that burns” sets fire to the borders between the poetic and the political. In a reality that never surrenders, pregnant with desire and saturated with conflicts, we hope for the collective growth of wild glances. With our pierced eyes, we will try again this year.
Marco Bertozzi and Alina Marazzi
Artistic directors
www.unarchivefest.it
segreteria@unarchive.it
06 5730 5447