Found Image: A programme of Premio Cesare Zavattini shorts and presentation of UnArchive festival and the Audiovisual Archive of the Labour and Democratic Movement (Aamod)

13.00-15.00

La seleccion de Chile (Giulio Pacini, Italy, 2022/23, 15′)

The Sea Never Dies / Il mare che non muore  (Caterina Biasiucci, Italy, 2019/2020, 13′)

Men Are Hungry Too / Anche gli uomini hanno fame (Andrea Settembrini, Francesco Lorusso, Gabriele Licchelli, Italy, 2019, 20’)

Bluescreen (Alessandro Arfuso, Riccardo Bolo, Italy, 2016, 17’)

Audiovisual Archive of the Labour and Democratic Movement (Aamod), all dedicated to found footage films and the creative use of archive material. The event will be in English.

“The Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico is an archive more of the present than of the past, and the materials valiantly collected do not sit there on the shelves in an indefinite wait, becoming more and more archives, according to the old vocabulary, but are instead traversed by a lively impatience to enter into the present dialectic of democratic struggles, to contribute to creating a freer information right from its roots.” – Cesare Zavattini, 1980

The Fondazione Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico ETS, born in the late 1970s, carries out its activities in the field of audiovisuals, to encourage the construction and dissemination of the collective histories and memories of social movements and their protagonists. The Foundation’s first president was Cesare Zavattini, who held this role for many years. 

The Foundation has always been committed to the research, collection, production and preservation of historical, repertory, topical and narrative reconstruction audio-visual documents, and to the promotion of their knowledge, study, analysis and processing for new uses and reuse. 

articular attention is devoted to training activities on the topics indicated. The oldest and most important of these is the Zavattini Prize, dedicated to training and the making of a found footage film: young professional and non-professional filmmakers of any nationality, aged between 18 and 35, can take part in the Prize; a jury chooses the finalists, who take part in a training and development course conducted, and selects the winning projects from among them.

The newest addition to AAMOD’s creative reuse of materials costellation is UnArchive Found Footage Fest, an international festival, born from a deep reflection on the function of audio-visual and film archives in the contemporary world, in the development of art, culture and more generally of civil society. It will take place in Rome in spring.

In a historical moment in which the reuse of images gives rise to higly experimental cinematographic horizons, creating new projects from archive fragments encourages the expressive research of film-makers and video artists, animators and performers, archivists and art curators, in a cross contamination of languages and practices that results in surprising film forms. An aesthetic and technological revolution in which found footage increasingly takes on the traits of a pervasive and manifold experience, which raises new questions about the meaning of images and of life.

UnArchive Found Footage Fest, The Zavattini Prize and AAMOD, want to investigate and accompany the public through these expressive horizons, revealing a composite audio-visual scenario, often highly performative, in which the notions of audio-visual creation and fruition are reformulated through interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogues that are increasingly alive, open and regenerating.

Gabriele Ragonesi