Film

MaTerre VR Experience is a five-episodes collective film unique in the international film scene that blends together moving images and poetry through VR 360° technology. The work is the result of the Euro-Mediterranean Poetry Film Workshop that took place in Matera between April and May 2019.

The five episodes of the film come from the encounter between 5 filmmakers and 5 poets: Gianluca Abbate (Italy) and Eduard Escoffet (Spain) for Cos endins, Domenico Brancale (Italy) and Blerina Goce (Albania) for Ate ca tu, Vito Foderà (Italy) and Yolanda Castaño (Spain) for Mai terra, Giuseppe Schillaci (Italy) and Aurélia Lassaque (France) for Transhumance, Elena Zervopoulou (France/Greece) and Nilson Muniz (Brazil/Portugal) for BeLeaf.

The project was born from the need to try to radically rethink the imaginary of the land of the “Sassi” through a combination of innovation and tradition, orality and technology.

Restore blessed ignorance to the centre of our knowledge. Retrieve illiteracy. Seek the lament, the voice that lies beneath the silt of the human being, the expression of an irremediable urgency, of a will to be silent no longer, having been silent too long. Ate Ca Tu means believing is a flying donkey, discovering in the beast’s humiliated face the invisible divine. Ate Ca Tu is the path of a poet seeking to cross the threshold of his own identity, the mirror of all solitude.

Is it possible to invent ourselves as a unit in a world of images and symbols we ourselves have created? What does it mean to have an identity? Ate Ca Tu is the testimony of these questions that continue to sound in my ear and the attempt to move boundaries, altering our illusory certainties. In the video actions are performed that alter the state of several objects and, in some way, their identity. A stone, a statue of a Madonna, a European flag are the stable names of things that change, however, according to choices, situations, needs, codes, categories. The washing of these objects is an act of purification. Most of the time, identity depends on our decisions. The river that becomes black, the poet’s repeating voice are stages in an itinerary that the poet undertakes to encounter the animal within him. The donkey, its bray, represent the possibility of zeroing everything in order to begin again. (Domenico Brancale)

Domenico Brancale - Poet and performer. He has written: Cani e Porci (Ripostes, 2001), L’ossario del sole (Passigli, 2007), Controre (Effigie, 2013), Incerti umani (Passigli, 2013) and Per diverse ragioni (Passigli, 2017). He edited Cristina Campo In immagini e parole and translated Cioran, J. Giorno, Michaux, Claude Royet-Journoud. He is one of the curators of the series on international poetry “Le Meteore” published by Effigie and the series “Prova d’Artista” published by Galerie Bordas. On working on voice and space he realized the following art performances: Nessun sole sorge senza l’uomo (Monte Calvario, Sant’Arcangelo 2007), Questa deposizione rischiara la tua assenza (Gasparelli Arte Contemporanea, Fano 2009), Un sempre cominciamento (Galerie Hus, Paris 2012), Nei miei polmoni c’è l’attesa (Galleria Michela Rizzo, Venezia 2013), Incerti umani (Galleria de Foscherari, Bologna 2013), Se bastasse l’oblio (MAC Lissone, 2014), Langue brûlé (Palais de Tokyo, Paris 2014). He lives between Bologna and Venice.

Blerina Goce - Born and raised in Albania, Blerina Goce studied journalism and for the past 15 years has worked as an arts and culture journalist. Later she became editor-in-chief in some of the major dailies and magazines of the country to then turn to filmmaking as a director. She attended several film workshops and master classes on writing and directing such as Directing and Practice of Editing of the documentary film by Atelier “Varan” – Albascript Development at BalkanFilmMarket 2017, Stories we tell with Richard Pearce and Lynzee Klingman at DocuFest and Eave on demand with Katriel Schory. Blerina has recently worked as national consultant and documentaries mentor for a movable video program organized by Open Society Foundation at the Youth Activist Forum, Albania. She did a MA in Literary Studies at the Center of Albanological Studies in Tirana. For the last few years Blerina has been part of the International Jury for several festivals in the Balkan region.

Transhumance, from the Latin trans-humus, meaning “through the earth”, indicates the migration of cattle toward seasonal pastures, a rite of the agro-pastoral world still performed in Basilicata and in other regions of the Mediterranean. As in a sort of transhumance, this film provides an itinerary of communion with the Earth: an invitation to rediscover one’s own mineral, vegetal, animal nature, disconnecting from the hyper-technological networks of the contemporary world: an overturning of reality, like that of Carnival.

With the poet Aurélia Lassaque, we imagined an initiation itinerary allowing the spectator to reconnect with the most intimate and authentic part of his human nature. We conceived tableaux vivants, inviting the audience to immerge themselves in their mineral, vegetal and animal nature. This is an invitation to disconnect from technological systems that can become a prison, inserting masks between us and the world of screens, just like the one through which we are viewing this short film in virtual reality. The immersive device of the 360-degree video thus becomes a paradox. We use it as a provocation, to provide a real, a true immersion into the human dimension, instead of virtual immersion. We invite our spectator to the Transhumance understood as an itinerary between man’s natural dimensions, contrary to the Transhumance that wants us all to be cyborgs. The mask becomes an emblem, because it is used to conceal, to mystify, as well as to transform the self, to quit one’s own little identity and unite with other entities, as in a Dionysian rite, on a trail of empathy and metamorphosis, a carnival feast where the social hierarchies are inverted and natural elements are mixed together: the man becomes a tree, as in the traditional masque of the rumita at the Satriano carnival, or else a cow or a bull ready for the transhumance, as in the anthropological carnivals of Aliano and Tricarico. Matera and the millenary traditions of Basilicata thus become characters of the film, inviting the spectator to take off his mask of virtual reality and reconnect with his true nature. (Giuseppe Schillaci)

Giuseppe Schillaci - Born in Palermo in 1978, he lives between Bologna, Rome and Paris where he works as film writer and director. Member of Eurodoc and advisor for Doc.it (Italian Documentarists Association), he has participated to different international festivals receiving many awards (Torino Film Festival, Docs Barcelona, Thessaloniki, IDS, IDFA Amsterdam, Hot Docs Toronto). In 2009 he won the Jury Special Award at the Torino Film Festival for his film The Cambodian Room- Situazioni con Antoine D’Agata, co-directed by Tommaso Lesena De Sarmiento. Amongst his works: Cosmic Energy Inc. (2011) and Apolitics Now! Tragicommedia d’una campagna elettorale (2013), Hotel Patria (2014), L’ombra del padrino- ricerche per un film (2016). In 2017 he directed his fifth documentary film Tranzicion, Arte e Potere in Albania. Editor for Nazione Indiana, Schillaci has written two novels, L’età definitiva (Libreria Edizioni, 2012) and L’anno delle ceneri (Nutrimenti Edizioni, 2010). He also holds different writing and cinematography workshops at Cinema schools and the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.

Aurélia Lassaque - Born and raised near Toulouse, in the south of France in 1983. Interested in the interaction between different art forms, she often works in collaboration with artists, videomakers, dancers and musicians. She has worked in collaboration with the American painter and university professor Julie Baugnet on an exhibition in both USA (2009) and Italy (2010). She is a bilingual poet writ- ing in both French and Occitan. She studied Romance languages at the University of Montpellier. Active supporter of language diversity she is a literary counselor for the French festival Paroles Indigo and the Italian Ostana - Scritture in Lingua Madre Award. In her works Occitan and French commit to complete themselves in a never ending dialogue. She creates her poems writing on two separate sheets of paper writing in both French and Occitan switching to one language to the other to end with a single poem written in two languages. From 2010 she works as artistic director for the Festival delle Letterature Minoritarie d’Europa e del Mediterraneo, a travelling festival involving the cities of Teramo, Giulianova, Rosciano and Villa Badessa focused on the connection between The Art of travelling and The Art of gathering. In 2011 she curated the exhibition Dialogues between cultures and languages through the conjugation of artistic expressions at the Council of Europe.

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A leaf dancing in the wind recalls our true nature to us. Far from civilisation, a poet emerges from the leaves of autumn in a grotto. As in Plato’s cave, after a state of “hibernation” in a world of illusions, the poet incarnates man’s thought, the philosopher who seeks a different perspective, who sees the light. Outside the cave, he discovers the rebirth of nature, springtime, reflecting his own rebirth. A brief experience of reawakening and liberation to re-align us with our essence. Precariously on the edge of a precipice, driven to our limits out of our comfort zone, all that is left is to trust in nature in us, BeLeaf (be a leaf). The change is possible when sustained by BeLeaf (by belief): have a good flight!

In response to the urgent need to take global actions to ensure human rights and environmental rights are being respected, I felt the need to go beyond the differences that may divide us, focusing on our deeper human identity and interconnectivity, carved in nature. The film, given its immersive aspect, attempts to offer an emotional experience of nature, of our common essence, aspiring to awaken our collective consciousness to the identity that unites us as a human community. A spring call for our hearts, our societies, our Mother Earth. Inspired by Plato’s cave, we leave the world of repression, illusions and power hungry manipulative shadows, to come out to light, truth, collective consciousness and action. Along the way, we encounter Narcissus by a river and Echo on a cliff-top, embodied by the poet, who rediscovers the duality and multiplicity contained in the “indivi-dual”. Orchestrated by the elements of nature, the film follows the poet in his journey of awakening. From nature to human nature, from I to WE; a call for responsible action as humans collectivity. Aware that the observer influences reality, the viewer is no longer passive. He is invited to experience a rebirth and to generate the reality that he dreams of. “BeLief” in an aligned common intention and collective action, may bring positive change. The answer is in the leaf, “BeLeaf”, “BeLief”. (Elena Zervopoulou)

Elena Zevopoulou - After a MA in clinical cross-cultural psychology, she worked together with immigrant families in Paris as ethno-psychologist and as a UNESCO consultant with street children in Madagascar. She also did a MA in Direction of documentary films and visual anthro- pology at Paris University. For the past 10 years together with One Vibe Films, independent film production company that aims to promote intercultural dialogue, she had produced, directed and filmed several creative documentaries for international broadcasters and NGOs. Shot in Southeast Asia, Europe and Africa, her films bring the audience closer to everyday ethnic minorities, women and children’s reality. Narrating emotional local stories she aims at raising awareness on sustainable, environmental, social and human rights development. She organizes PV workshops (Participatory Video) to enhance bottom-up social activism and empower both the individual and local communities. Her latest most significant works are: Sea Gypsies (included in the BBC series Why Poverty?); Greece: Days of Change (screened in 60 cinemas around Spain, as Documentary of the Month); Anti-bullism campaign (officially used by the Greek as well as six more European Ministry of Education); Walking in Light (a poetic video-dance performance).

Nilson Muniz Nilson Muniz is a multidisciplinary artist, actor, singer and spoken word performer. He moves between spoken words, song and vo- cal sounds. With his work on the multiplicity of poetry on scene (word, body and sound) he was proclaimed Poetry Slam Champion of Portugal in 2014. That same year he released his first EP UMHOMEMDORMINDO. His poems have been published in Portugal, Spain and Italy. With his exhibitions and workshops he has taken performance art, poetry, literature and theater to Georgia, Fin- land, Estonia, Italy, Israel, Bulgaria, Germany, France, England, Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Brazil. He lives the stage as his own alive book for poetry solo performances while taking part in different creative partnerships and keeping acting and singing in monographic projects. .

After so many generational repetitions and beneath so many layers is a territory to be negotiated beyond each person’s skin, inside: the cavity that echoes the intimate and singular identity of everyone. The voices that populate this film bring us to various spaces in Matera, from tourist agglomerations to the town’s internal spaces (grottoes, caves, cis- terns, lanes, rooms) and the body’s own unassailable space: pleasure and desire for other bodies that no one can cancel.

The film arises from an encounter I had with the poet and artist Eduard Escoffet in April 2019 in the town of Matera, the “Underground City” or “Mater” from the Latin for Mother, which, with its grottoes and caverns, its holes and cracks, gave us the idea of a gigantic living organism: a body hiding beneath infinite layers, the intimate identity of consciousness, over which the outside world no longer exercises its control. The itinerary of the film is vertical. We start from a hyperuranian world crowded with tourists, then accessing the tiny capillary roads of the Sassi, which overlook the Murgia. We then find ourselves in a tufa quarry, the last space on the surface before descending into the depths of the city, into the underground water cistern. Finding the place inspiring, I decided to insert, in the final images of the film, abstract forms taken from the floral decorations of Matera’s crypt of original sin. Every spot is marked by a gap, inside which flows a red-coloured organic liquid. All my works are based on a creative process that consists of accumulating and stratifying video documents and images. This video, found-footage or shots I take ad hoc for the editing process, reveal a new sense of work I had not considered, which develops independently of the initial idea. In the first scene of the film, for example, showing the crumbling of Ma- tera, the image expresses an archetypal conflict with the mother-figure: “Mater”, precisely. My collaboration with Escoffet was very creative. Duplication, overlapping, repetition, the use of loops are languages that we both extend, I in the video, Eduard in the audio. For this reason, we decided there should be no rules during the shoot- ing, and that the space should be understood as a theatre stage ready for a performance, thanks also to the 360° device. The result is a work that reflects the poetics of both our languages. I feel that narrative cinema will find no place in VR technology as we know it, because its language, in its 360° view, is totally distorted. The framing and editing, for example, follow different rules, and the scenic space is closer to that of the theatre, in its relationship between stage and audience, between spectator and performance. I believe that this technology is a very powerful tool to grapple with and invent new language systems, a fundamental instrument for art videos and all other forms of visual experimentation. (Gianluca Abbate)

Gianluca Abbate - Author of experimental films. He won the award Nastro d’Argento as best short film, several different awards at TFF32 Torino Film Festival; Videoformes, International festival of visual arts in Clermont-Ferrand, France; Visioni Italiane in Bologna and a special mention at Genova Film Festival. His works have been screened at Rome MAXXI, Moscow MMOMA, MACRO, Istanbul Modern Art Museum and broadcasted on Arte France. He taught new cinema and television technologies at Scuola Civica di Cinema in Milan and motion graphic at IED (European Institute of Design). He’s also collaborating together with many different advertising agencies around the world and he is author of several graphics identities of RAI TV. Amongst his works: Cell (202), H2O (2006), The Story of Gardens (2012), Panorama (2014), New World (2017), Con te o senza di te (2018).

Eduard Escoffet - Poet and cultural agitator. He worked with every aspect connected to poetry focusing his interest on sound poetry and poetry readings. Beside being involved in Barcelona’s counter-culture scene, he has also performed in poetry festivals and poetry events all around Europe, China, USA, South Africa and many countries in Latin America. Co-founder of the poetry collective Projectes poètics sense títol – propost.org (1996-2016) and co-director of Barcelona Poesia, Barcelona Inetrnational Poetry Festival (2010-2012). He has also been the director of PROPOSTA, contemporary poetry and sound poetry festival at CCCB, Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (2000-2004). Amongst his pubblications: Gaire (2012), El terra i el cel (LaBreu, 2013) and Menys i tot (LaBreu, 2017) as well as the artist’s book Estramps with Evru (2011). His second book Suelo y cielo (Arrebato Libros, 2018) has recently been translated in Spanish. Together with the band Bradien he has published the records Pols (2012) and Escala (2015). Together with Eugeni Bonet, Escoffet also curated the film series on Letterist Cinema Próximamente en esta pantalla at MACBA, Barcelona (2005). Further more, he is co-author of the theatre plays ¡Wamba va! (with Gerard Altaió, Josep Pedrals and Martí Sales, 2005), Puaj./Ecs. (with G. Altaió and J. Pedrals, 2005) and La Belbel Underground (with Carles Hac Mor and G. Altaió, 2006).

Identity is a border, a boundary, a limit. It protects us by hiding us, it preserves us by limiting our experience. It is an instrument that evolves and changes, but it belongs to us. And we must figure out what to do with it: can we extend, cross, open that border? We can go further. The muse/performer/outsider undertakes a liminal journey, through stone, earth, water, time, sound. From the matrix to its fracture, from comfort to vertigo, to learn the way out and to meet the other.

I wanted to represent identity as “limes” and “limen”, boundary and frontier, threshold and starting line. A mobile border, which expands and shrinks, is overcome and cuts. With the other. Matera is liminal, identities can meet or clash, stand on one side or the other. And I wanted the viewer to become a crisis area, poised between comfort and vertigo, a transition from one scenario to another. I imagined Yolanda as a coryphaeus and her voices like a choir that calls us to be something else, to be ourselves. While time distorts and changes and vibrates in the strings of Fists like antennas. Mai Terra is a multilayer paths, from a belly to a breach. The camera moves, hides, emerges, stops. It brings the vision and listening until a border where you can follow the poet or give him your back, you can decide where you stay and, above all, where you go. Because identity is migrant, like poetry and poets, like me. Like all of us. (Vito Foderà)

Vito Foderà - TV journalist graduated in International and Diplomatic Sciences at the University of Bologna. Multimedia expert for interna- tional communication in 2008 at the Basso Foundation school of Journalism. He worked for different TV and web channels: Sky Tg 24, Rai4, Current, La7, MTV, Laeffe, Repubblica.it, TV2000, Rai1, Rai3. For ever in love with reportage he works as an author, producer and director. He has declared: “I move between news analisys and immersive storytelling using a 360° camera. I constantly seek a language able to both tell the stories of reality and to transmit its complexity. When the tv is switched off I work in the social anti-mafia front with daSud Association”.

Yolanda Castaño - Poet and videomaker, she is a contributor to various newspapers and magazines in Galicia. She was the general secretary of the Writers Association in Galician, director of the Sargadelos Gallery of La Coruña and founder of a poetry publishing house for emerging authors. She has managed different poetry workshops and participated in creating numerous Galician and Spanish poetic anthologies, national and international poetry meetings and festivals. In her work she found common ground for the sculptural language, the musical one, the audiovisual one and poetry to coexist. She has recently been published by Squilibri with her Idioma da tinta / Lingua dell’inchiostro a work done in collaboration with the Galician musician Isaac Garabtos.

Materre, Laterre, Uneterre
A movie about the movie

Duration: 40 minutes
Format: HD, color, stereo
Year: 2019

Materre, Laterre, Uneterre is a documentary shot by the students of the filmmaking and screenplay Master's Degree Course in Cinema, Photography, Performance of the University of Calabria (Department of Humanities Studies), under the guidance of Prof. Bruno Roberti, within of the MaTerre project, VR360 film made by Rete Cinema Basilicata in the framework of Matera Capital of European Culture 2019.

This film is a sort of tripartite mosaic. The first part is dedicated to the historical, social, landscaping, cinematographic memory of South Italy. Starting from the “Southern question”, from its assumptions and developments, from the poetic and political suggestions of a great man of the twentieth century

as Rocco Scotellaro, here are recalled unforgettable images of great Italian filmmakers such as Francesco Rosi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Seta and Mario Martone in order to reconstruct the civil and film-poetic "temperature" of an entire territory of the soul, of which Matera and Basilicata become an emblematic mirror. The words of the poet Lello Voce are the guiding thread of this part. The second part is the report of the building of the MaTerre project made for Matera Capital of European Culture 2019. Introduced by the creator and artistic director (of the film area) Antonello Faretta, and through interviews and images, we enter in the “workshop" of this 360-degree "film experience".

The third part is a "reasoned backstage" of the VR film composed of five segments (Poetry, Matera, Identity, Earth, Migration) in which the artists engaged in the work reflect, speaking on the camera, their thoughts on the main themes, and today more urgent than ever in the Euro-Mediterranean scenario, which move and animate the mosaic of the five films contained in the 360 ° of Materre VR Experience.

(Bruno Roberti)

Credits

MaTerre is a Matera European Capital of Culture 2019 project co-produced by Rete Cinema Basilicata and Matera Basilicata 2019 Foundation co-financed by Lucana Film Commission Foundation and in partnership with Meditalents (France), Albanian National Film Center (Albania), Balkan Film Market (Albania), Rattapallax (USA), Italian Institute of Culture Madrid (Italy), CIRCE - University of Turin (Italy), DAMS - University of Calabria (Italy), Universosud (Italy), Noeltan Film (Italy) realized with the ethical fund of BCC Basilicata and Banca Etica under the patronage of CNA, National Confederation of Crafts, Small and Medium Enterprises and DICEM – University of Basilicata

Artistic directors: Antonello Faretta, Paolo Heritier, Lello Voce

Creative design and production by Adriana Bruno and Antonello Faretta

The catalogue is curated by Bruno Di Marino and edited by Artdigiland (artdigiland.com)

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How to watch MaTerre?

Immersive experience

Non immersive experience

Episodes

Do you want to make a video installation or presentation of MaTerre VR Experience?

Write to retecinemabasilicata@gmail.com and together we will organize a special event also in your city.

MaTerre VR Experience tour

Backstage

Materre, Laterre, Uneterre
A movie about the movie

Catalogue

MATERRE VR EXPERIENCE

Past Future Cinema

Credits

How to watch MaTerre?

Immersive experience

Non immersive experience

Episodes

Do you want to make a video installation or presentation of MaTerre VR Experience?

Write to retecinemabasilicata@gmail.com and together we will organize a special event also in your city.

MaTerre VR Experience tour

Backstage

Materre, Laterre, UneterreA movie about the movie

Catalogue

MATERRE VR EXPERIENCE

Past Future Cinema

Credits

Materre, Laterre, Uneterre
A movie about the movie