Coniglio, Leoni & circostanze varie

Coniglio, Leoni & circostanze varie Private Cinema. Luca Ferro
From 8th to 27th October | online on MyMovies

Two cousins, precisely offscreen, with a digital camera pointed on a malfunctioning television screen record – with a commentary – some images taken from old 8mm films of their own family. The outcome is a video-letter, a metalinguistics experiment made on request for their friends Allaman, to be then sent to his far, never-met, Australian relatives. What comes out of it is an accidental, but vivid, critical interpretation about the nature of home movies, about the extraordinary intertwining  of memory and present.

 

Luca Ferro, a thought on Coniglio, Leoni & circostanze varie

 

«It is not by chance, perhaps, that to classify the form of my work I had to come up with the new term of Private Cinema. When I carry out a video, I always hope that it can be interesting to the most people, however I am fully aware that, in order to appreciate it – as long as it’s worthwhile – the viewer must allow me/themselves a squandering of time that not all – provided they want it – can afford to spare, in whatever moment of their existence. Then, realistically, I do not strive for an audience, but if anything for a given number of spectators, whom I most willingly would name “videoreaders” if such a term didn’t take the chance to be misanderstood. Videoreaders meaning what? I’ll try to explain that: Coniglio, Leoni e circostanze varie can be fully deciphered only after a plurality of interpretations. But can I ostensibly demand from whomsoever such an availability? I don’t think so. At best, I can hope for my work to catch the démodé eye (or prémodé) of a viewer/reader, rather than come across the tank-sight of the spectator unidirectionally grinding the 25 frames per second, making use of the thinking break, with just the bethinking of previous signs, given a deviation of the text: that doesn’t hesitate, if need be, to break the flux of images to restart it from a previous point.»

 

Luca Ferro, observations via e-mail after the telecine made by Home Movies

 

« (…) the copy is new because part of the images composing the video are the outcome of a properly made telecine and not the result of a digitization process of a VHS tape (made in turn from a bad telecine). Hence, if the idea in the previous version was already all there and well structured in its unraveling in layers and planes able to amaze even the author (or, as I like to better consider myself: its midwife), in this version, new in a few moments even for the images used, it stands out better the material contrast between the 8mm quality of the sequences in full screen and the basic narrative structure (both audio and video) quite dismal, aesthetically-wise but abundant in grandeur and stimulus due to what we glimpse and make out of the sound.»

regia

Luca Ferro

running time

21'

film format

8mm and mini-DV

year

2009

Genre

Experimental

Country

Italy