Starting from archival footage of the San Francisco neighborhood of Bilbao, its streets and nightlife, and clubs and discos that no longer exist, this filmic essay explores the idea of a queer space, inviting a somewhat utopian journey through the places of sexual dissidence and outlining a history of cruising and gay desire in the city.
Country
SpainYear
2024Length
9'
Category
ExperimentalScreenplay
Matteo GiampetruzziEditing
Matteo GiampetruzziSound
Matteo GiampetruzziSynopsis
Biography
Born in Campobasso, Italy, in 1999, Matteo Giampetruzzi studied Film Directing at the public film school ‘Gian Maria Volonté’ in Rome, and Film Curating at the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola in San Sebastián, Basque Country. His works, which were showcased in several international film festivals, explore themes of sexuality, growing up, masculinity, and memory. As an independent curator, he has collaborated with institutions such as Filmoteca de Catalunya and Sicilia Queer Filmfest.
Statement
todos los barrios posibles takes as its starting point the exploration of a place, the working-class neighbourhood of San Francisco, in Bilbao, which has undergone deep transformations over the years. The film is an evocation of the dissident bodies that inhabited it, resisting the oppression of dictatorship, and a speculation, starting from that context, on how queer desire can permeate and redefine urban space. Mine was thus an attempt to trace a possible queer cartography of a specific and at the same time symbolic place: on the one hand, the neighbourhood, its nightlife in the 1980s, the marks left by the passing of time; on the other, more broadly, the idea of a diffuse, eroticised, queer space, where the bodies wonder in search of other bodies, of pleasure, of liberation.
— Matteo Giampetruzzi
Archival materials
Archival images of various formats and origins, including: Home movies (Fondo Filmoteca Vasca) / Amateur films and Basque video art from the 1980s / Images from Telefrisko (a neighborhood television station) / Archives of Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola / Images from Google Maps / Pornographic images / Personal archives.
