Artistic experiences - process

Exploration of the intimate narrative with archive footages around the body issue – Milan

Place of the workshop: Theatre inside Milano-Bollate’s prison

Partners involved:
Lieux Fictifs:
– Joseph Césarini, film director and trainer
– Emmanuelle Raynaut, visual artist and trainer
– Pascal Rehnolt, assistant film director and editor
– Aurora Vernazzani, intern film director assistant and trainer
Coopérativa sociale e.s.t.i.a :
– Michelina Capato, artistic director, stage director
– Beatrice Zecchinelli, videomaker and trainer
Institut National de l’Audiovisuel:
– Mireille Maurice, regional director of INA Mediterranée

Audiences and territories involved:
Four inmates participating to e.s.t.i.a. theatre training workshops inside Bollate’s prison
Two participants from the outside, students from IULM

Methodology proposed:
Collaborative creation of short films made from archive images, working in duo.
Work around the collaboration and the exploration of the intimate narrative, through the body issue.

Archives used : Archives from the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel collection

Results : Three short-films between 2 and 4 minutes length: « Affamati », « Lottare sospesi », «Una vita piena di speranza».

Summary of the methodology proposed:
The proposal made to participants was to internalize the archives images (coming from INA collection) proposed in an intuitive, sensitive, not rational way, on the thematic of the body. After viewing a corpus made of one hour of archives, the trainers suggested the group to let one image rise, and to choose one missing image.
The initial difficulty has been to avoid the trap of a narration that would be over-built, over-logical. Trainers tried to bring the participants toward a sensitive experiment of the image material, in doing so sharpening the intentions of the duos. Two extracts from “La Rabbia” has been proposed, one by Pasolini and the other by Guareschi, in order to support the scope concerning the fact to build a narrative, a personal point of view from identical images. The transition toward the editing station facilitated the work process, as participants have been able to realize the possibilities offered by the software.
In each duo, there has been an interesting phenomenon of openness: each person let the image of the other be present without giving up its own one, for example thanks to the alternate editing or to the images superimposed. The work around sound strengthened the complicity inside duos, creating a balance that brings strength and intensity to the short films. One of the results has been a shift from participants thanks to the work of image transformation and the one of collaborative creation in duo: their first relationship with the image has been changed in most of the case.)