[SAIFF author] Ritratto temporale III - short film by Alessandra Ilaria Pezone, Italy

 

A girl walks down the street, seeming to approach life with lightness, perhaps a bit naive. However, she becomes serious when talking about her artistic practice: issues of perception, synesthesia, and translation between sight and sound are at the center of her research. Alessandra is the protagonist of the third episode of the series "Temporal Portrait," dedicated to "unknown or emerging protagonists of contemporary artistic practice," writes director Ilaria Pezone. Between the two, there is correspondence that starts from biography - Alessandra comes from a wealthy family, studied in America where her passion for visual arts was born - and leads to actual artistic experimentation. Here lies the key to Pezone's film, which aims to "modulate filming and editing around the subject and her work." The editing thus becomes the voice of the director, suggesting, commenting, and showing the work of this young woman and with her, an entire generation of artists. In Alessandra's life, which seems rather peaceful, the pursuit of beauty becomes the driving force instead of conflict, and we grasp all the practical implications of creation when Pezone immerses us in the process rather than the product.

Lucrezia Ercolani

Among the most relevant authors who have participated in the Sipontum Arthouse International Film Festival, we can certainly include Ilaria Pezone. To provide some context to her cinema and channel the discussion within our perspective, we must take a small step back and talk about the New American Cinema Group (NACG), a truly independent film movement founded by Jonas Mekas in the early 1960s. In the spirit of a new humanism, the NACG also declares itself as a practice of renewal of art and life together: "we are for art but not at the expense of life. We do not want false, glossy, clean films - we prefer them raw, dirty, but alive." [...] From this stems the belief that the new cinema is rooted in forms of improvisation, where stories and characters make way for the shapeless flow of life. (Giulia Simi - Jonas Mekas, cinema and life, ETS, Pisa, 2022 p.34).

Ilaria Pezone's cinema emerges, in our view, from this cinematic experience; it becomes a sort of lone star within the galaxy set up by Jonas Mekas, a galaxy that exploded long ago and can now be traced in fragments scattered around the world; a kind of cinematic Big Bang.

In Pezone's cinema, there is a remarkable inclination towards truth preferred over form, even though it is ultimately truth itself that creates its forms in her cinema each time. In Pezone's cinema, there is a tendency towards layered artistic observation; on one hand, meditation on artistic forms and unknown artists grappling with their latest creations (as seen in "Temporal Portraits"), on the other hand, a form of meditation on one's own artistic existence, continually questioned. This meditation is manifested through shots of the author herself entering the image in the form of reflections in mirrors or glass, or as a projected shadow on the wall (complete with the camera as an extension of herself). Ilaria Pezone is always present in her films; she doesn't just make a Hitchcockian cameo but becomes a reflective and self-reflective element of the film. This leads to a human and political thesis, perhaps unintentional: life is already an artwork in itself, always different and always contradictory. This discourse is carried forward with images and words and not without a healthy and substantial dose of self-irony.

Vincenzo Totaro, SAIFF, Sipontum Arthouse Film Festival

Director’s bio-filmography

Ilaria Pezone (Lecco, Italy, 1986) teaches Shooting Techniques at the Accademia di Brera, where she graduated specialising in Cinema and Video. Since 2010 she has been working as audio-video operator and editor in documentary production. Among her latest films: the short film Luna in Capricorno (2018), the medium-length film Asmrrrr Molesto (2019) and the feature film France – quasi un autoritratto (2017).