Art is always public | An artist’s film each week! #5 Fide Dayo

Nuovo appuntamento con il format online di Villa Romana.

Comunicato stampa

how can we preserve closeness and exchange when the survival motto these days is "social distancíng"? With a film programme we would like to maintain a form of public and an attention towards artistic productions. In a state of emergency, as we all live it now, together and individually, these can generate forms of friendship, courage and solidarity.

Every Wednesday we share an artist's film online, which has been produced in or around Villa Romana in recent years or was shown here. There are also some new releases!

We would like to thank all participating artists for connecting with us, with you and with each other in this way and for agreeing to show their films in private formats - instead of a big screen. The programme includes films by Mikhail Karikis, Shannon Bool, Lerato Shadi, Sophie Reinhold, Fide Dayo, Mario Rizzi, Maya Schweizer, Eleni Kamma, Dani Gal, Karolina Bregula, Andrea d'Amore, Alessandra Ferrini, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Eske Schlüters and others.

22.04. - 28.04.2020
Mario Rizzi, Il malinteso / The Misconception (2009)
Video, color, 9 min, Italian with English subtitles
Mario Rizzi, Il malinteso / The Misconception, video still

(Please click / Link in image)
PW: villa.romana

The short film Il malinteso / The Misconception deals with the endless humiliations and repeated human rights abuses many refugee women endure simply for being born female. It was shot in a shelter for trafficking victims and its protagonist is an Eastern European woman, who migrated to Italy in search of work and ended up in forced prostitution. With unconcealed intimacy, she tells about herself and about her aspiration to an ordinary life, certainly a very modest request but completely unheard. The beauty of her hands and the elegance of their movements strongly contrasts with the tension in her voice and the depth of her reflections. The camera becomes an empowering tool of self-affirmation, against prejudices and misconceptions. The Misconception is the title of a book by Franco La Cecla, in which he states that "the distance which keeps us separate is also a deep common layer which keeps us close but which we will never understand."

Mario Rizzi is an Italian artist and filmmaker, born 1962 in Barletta and living in Berlin. Over the last 25 years his films and photographs were mainly focused on the Middle East and on the theme of migration. He has developed a practice of interacting with internally displaced people, refugees and activists and spent many years working in refugee camps.

22.04. - 28.04.2020
Maya Schweizer, La Corsa del Venditore / The Run of the Seller (2008)
Video, b/w, 6:48 min
Maya Schweizer, La Corsa del Venditore / The Run of the Seller, video still

(Please click / Link in image)
PW: LacorsadelVenditore-2008

In La Corsa del Venditore (The Run of the Seller), Africans who immigrated to Italy, in this case to Florence, are never seen but talked about by an outsider. La Corsa del Venditore takes the form of a monologue spoken by an Italian woman talking on her cell phone, presumably to a friend, and describing a scene that she just witnessed. The well dressed woman is pacing in front of Florence’s main train station, accompanied by what the viewer assumes are her daughter and granddaughter. She describes in detail a scene during which African street vendors harassed by the police, were forced to quickly fold up the blankets used to display their merchandise on the pavement and to run away. To her surprise, the vendors settled down just a block away.

Maya Schweizer, born in Paris in 1976 and living in Berlin, investigates structures and processes of memory in her films and sound works, exposing their narratives and identity-forming functions. In doing so, she always proceeds from a quasi ethnological research on site. La Corsa del Venditore was made in Florence in 2008 during her stay at the Villa Romana.