A Memoria - by Cipri' e Maresco - Riminicinema 96
Sasha Stone
Luca, I am humbled before you. What a wonderfully written review. I feel
safe in saying, however (and believe myself not to be alone in this), that
I will never be able to shake the image of a mongoloid masterbating for
quite some time. And I didn't even see it. Really, though, I feel badly
that in America we don't often get the chance to see these kinds of
festivals and it's a damn shame (truth is I have no excuse since I live in
LA for chrissakes, surely I can find this and other films).
Anyway - thank you for taking the time to write this. It is appreciated.
And admired.
Sasha
...I know, I'm such a dork. Great review.
On Sat, 26 Oct 1996, Luca wrote:
> this is the only proper 'film' i had a chance to see in
> Riminicinema, as all the other movies that could have
> been interesting to me were scheduled in the mornings or
> afternoons.
> as i still haven't won the lottery, or had a chance to marry
> money, i unfortunately have to work to earn my living.
>
> besides A Memoria, i only saw some shorts, among which the
> latest work of mika kaurismaki (aki's less talented brother)
> which was rather pointless, and a dutch short shot in an
> airport which looked much like a too-long tv spot to me.
>
> anyway, thanks to everyone who suggested movies to see.
> sorry i had no chance to.
>
>
>
> A Memoria - by Daniele Cipri' and Francesco Maresco
> (Italy 1996, b/w, 40')
>
> Among tumbledown houses and rubble, men scarred in body and mind
> wander aimlessly, under a leaden sky. Cipri' and Maresco propose a
> timeless, painfully lucid interpretation of our (present? future?)
> conditions of life, seen through the eyes of embarrassingly
> deformed and wasted men.
>
> Should this kind of dfinitions make sense, we might say that this
> is Samuel Beckett meeting Tod Browning's Freaks, and it's odd that
> two directors working mainly on TV (Cinico Tv) keep producing
> absolutely out-of-the-market films. And to the apparent
> non-identifiableness of time and place of the settings corresponds a
> (real, this time) non-identifiableness of the possible (or -better-
> impossible) audience. In times when movies are written, directed, cut
> starting from the target, seeing pure cuts of cinema of the absurd is
> almost comforting, no matter how disorienting or distressing the
> experience can be.
>
> Tryig to explain Cipri' and Maresco's style to someone who has never
> seen Cinico Tv is almost impossible, and an idea can be given only by
> describing the single frames, always fixed, always shot in a gloomy
> high-contrast black and white, and made even more oppressing
> by absurdly day-for-night black skies, obtained by using gradual
> and red filters.
>
> Two men, kneeling in a church in ruins, worship a third man with a
> glass eye standing on display in a niche. One of the two men stands
> up and steals the idol's glass eye, then runs away through rubbly
> streets. He meets a Wizard, who first tempts him with a banquet
> materialized out of nowhere, then turns him in a dog-man and steals
> the glass eye, fixing it on his top-hat. A second Wizard
> follows the first, presumably in order to get the glass eye.
> They meet, but the first Wizard wins the duel and manages to get
> away. The chase goes on among a surrealist tableful of men in
> underpants (almost the last supper of a bum jesus), dregs of society
> staring at the camera or dancing, mongoloids masturbating in dirty
> corners, telephone poles, 'empty' shots of deserted streets.
> The two Wizards will meet again until the non-conclusive ending of a
> plot with no intention of being such.
> Actually, the characters in this subhuman aggregation don't have a
> story and are moved by obscure and anyway irrelevant motivations,
> all events are passively sustained by everybody.
> no action, no reaction.
>
> The soundtrack is by Steve Lacy, and consists in an unique
> soprano sax solo, performed live during the projection and
> heart-rending beyond any limit.
>
> Like Samuel Beckett, Cipri' and Maresco are not interested in Who,
> When, How or Where the (non) actions take place. The result is a
> terrifying frozen world with no apparent reason to be, and an
> incredibly visual and poetic experience which forces us to call some
> 'rules' of cinema in question, especially the arrogant, egocentric
> attitude of today's cinema: self- assured and satisfied with its
> precise, safe rules, with its effectful plots, its charming actors.
> In most cases this cinema is so full of itself to be convinced that its
> role is that of imposing characters to be imitated, behaviours to be
> followed. But it doesn't realize that, by proposing always the
> same schemes, the same conducts, the same reactions to the same
> actions, the same moral rules, it's running in a wheel like a guinea
> pig, and going nowhere.
>
> Cipri' and Maresco probably won't open new ways to cinema.
> Their destiny is that of remaining consigned in that no man's land that
> is
> all cinema which is alien to the 'institutional' cinematographic culture
> (and which is, exactly for the same reason, genuinely innovative).
> For this kind of cinema, nobody is really ready to commit himself
> (and proof of this are the - few, to be honest - hisses and boos heard
> at Riminicinema), as it's always easier and less risky to despise
> (or, more slyly, to ignore) the diversity rather than trying
> to understand it.
>
> Decades after the Surrealism's lesson, one would expect something more
> from those who declare their love for cinema.
> But, decades after the Surrealist lesson, thanks to directors like
> Cipri' and Maresco, there still seems to be hope to see new forms of
> cinema.
>
>
>
> ____
>
> Luca
> lv...@iper.net
>