Schermo dell'arte 2024
The festival dedicated to cinema and contemporary art returns to the city, from 13 to 17 November
The best and most recent international production of artists' films and documentaries on contemporary art in Florence for the 17th edition of Schermo dell'arte, from 13 to 17 November, whose main sponsor is the fashion house Gucci, which confirms its support by offering under-30s free admission to the scheduled screenings.
Opening this edition of the Festival is the live performance Edge of Life by American artist John Menick, commissioned by Schermo dell'arte. The artist dialogues with a sentient computer on the possibility of digital immortality. In this sort of reverse Turing Test, the computer interrogates the artist for purposes that may or may not include the cloning of his consciousness. A strange investigation into how the digital transforms the boundaries of the living.
Dimitris Athiridis Kostas Tsioukas performing Collective exhibition for a Single Body by Pierre Bal Blanc © Faliro House ProductionsDedicated to American artist and filmmaker Garrett Bradley, the Focus with which Lo schermo dell'arte celebrates each year a figure who has distinguished himself in his innovative and experimental use of the language of film. Her feature film Time, an epic love story and harsh indictment of the American justice system, was selected in competition at over 50 festivals, was nominated for an Oscar and won the Best Director Award for U.S. Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, making Garrett the first black woman in the Festival's history to win this award. The artist will give a talk open to the festival audience at New York University Florence-Villa Sassetti on Thursday 14 November at 3 pm.
The special event of the festival will be the presentation of exergue - on documenta 14 by Greek director Dimitris Athiridis, who for two years has followed the preparation of documenta 14 by filming the meetings and inspections of artistic director Adam Szymczyk and his curatorial team. Dimitris Athiridis will hold a masterclass in the spaces of the Strozzina on Friday 15 November at 10.30 am.
Lolo & Susako The Western Archive 2024 di Sergio Caballero (courtesy the artist)At the heart of the programme are artists' films, new voices and forms on the international moving image scene. These include the world premiere of Lina Lapelytė's The Speech, which received the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2019 for the Lithuanian Pavilion. Premiering in the presence of the authors, ‘Lolo & Sosaku’ The Western Archive, a personal revisitation of the western genre between fiction, documentary and art cinema by the multifaceted Spanish artist Sergio Caballero; Among the Palms, the Bomb, or: Looking for Reflections in the Toxic Field of Plenty by Lukas Marxt and Vanja Smiljanic; To Exist Under Permanent Suspicion by Valentin Noujaïm; The Invisible Worm by Anglo-Palestinian artist Rosalind Nashashibi; and The Book of Flowers by Polish artist Agnieszka Polska in which visual compositions of flowers come alive through the use of AI and animation.
Among the other screenings, one of the Italian artists who, among the new generations, have distinguished themselves most on the international scene for their experimental use of video, Diego Marcon, returns to the Art Screen with his recent La Gola.
To Exist Under Permanent Suspicion 2024 di Valentin Noujaïm (courtesy the artist)The Art Screen also presents a selection of some of the most recent documentaries on little-known protagonists and events in contemporary art. These include the European premiere of Art of Diplomacy by Brazilian director Zeca Brito; Ernest Cole: Lost and Found by Raoul Peck; Arte Povera. Notes for History by Andrea Bettinetti.
