Article by Marzia Picciano
If you're wondering: “what is RockOn doing at the MUBI Fest in Milan?“, in its first Italian edition, after having touched many other places in the world's imagination, from Rio to Amsterdam, last weekend of December 13-15? Simple: we take a break from music to observe it better from another side.
We're joking, we didn't miss anything at all, in fact, we were where we needed to be (from the parties of Capossela al Overhead crane to the brand new arrivals of October Drift al Legend), but we were also where we least thought we would arrive, at a festival dedicated to cinema, which isn't too correct to say. Because, to paraphrase Twentieth century Of Baricco who thinks he wants to get off the ship to see the sea from another perspective, with another life behind him and new lenses and new amazement, sometimes to understand music better and what we see and hear we need to see it under new lenses .
And so it went this weekend. Alessandro Del ReSenior Programming Manager of MUBI Italia and former artistic director behind several Italian film festivals with an international scope, together with his team he decided to bring much of his vision to the first Italian appointment of the itinerant platform of MUBIsupported by partner The Vision. The same can be said of the chosen location, theADI Museum in Milanhome of the history of design, rightly hidden from the collective madness of Sarpi and Moscova in an internal courtyard with an industrial flavor that opens like a stargate to a much more composed world, much more attentive, less in a hurry.
More content offers, as per the platform (screenings, meetings or talks, music, entertainment). Various proposals for films, shorts or feature films, new or not, and in the latter case, reported in a new light as already mentioned (for example: offering us the 'surprise' vision of Her in the late afternoon of the closing Sunday, for me, it was a blow to the heart, mostly because I hadn't seen him for 10 years) they followed one another uninterruptedly for three days, from the shorts session “Small Films, Big Names” which among others included works by Sofia Coppola (Lick The Stars) and of Bong Joon Ho (Incoherence) at Best firsts Times of debuts.
These screened every day at least twice in viewing cycles contained the true meaning of MUBI, the ability to look beyond the classic sense of meaning and explore the rest, the very psyche of a director, giving meaning to his work and not providing a mere catalog (the selection is still visible on the platform). This is also the meaning of the project which will be live next year (and is still ongoing) of creating a selection of films by Luca Marinelliactor among the protagonists of the last evening in a special talk announcing the collaboration and which was then prodromal to the screening of the little masterpiece by Spike Jonze which ended up making me cry (like others in the room).
After all, this is MUBI and this is what differentiates it from other streaming platforms, in addition to the presence of a “social” part which effectively makes it a digital film club: the desire to not simply provide a streaming service, but a community. For this reason, no surprise if in three days we happened to see the disarming again Shiva Baby or Dante's The Fall Of Tarsemrestored in 4K, perhaps in this case with the artist in the room. Indeed, precisely in this case the role of MUBI becomes evident: the re-discovery of that fantastic epic by the Romanian director would not have been possible without MUBI. Sometimes, so to speak, it would be best to leave our Luddite feelings aside.
The same thing can be said about the choice of directors such as Alice Rohrwacher who dominated on Saturday together with the director Alexandre Koberidzefor the meeting prior to the screening of WHAT DO WE SEE WHEN WE LOOK AT THE SKY?. In a kind of absorbed dreamism the two discussed the dimension of cinema, also wondering what the challenge is for the director in making cinema and making it understood.
Rohrwacher said it well, making films means seeing, and there is no doubt that seeing is a very difficult thing. Maybe this is why, inspired by her hermetic but not affected style, I went down to the room below to see her present the short Allegoria Cittadina, a story of how to reinvent, together with the French artist JRthe role of a working scaffold in a theater and making it a perfect scenography, if not the hidden protagonist of at least a clear and eloquent modern representation of the myth of the cave.
Looking at the things that surround us in a new light also seems to be the little hidden leitmotif that has connected all the works present, starting from the first (and here before) of Queer Of Luca Guadagninoto open the dance of the festival. Just before, Giulia Cavaliere had interviewed Francesco Bianconi de The Baustelles for the MUBI Podcast (made for Middle Chorawho then took care of various moments of the event with dedicated talks), the first of the appointments with music – followed by a DJ set by the star who emerged from XFactor (but who didn't emerge from there?) NAIP. Already in the first evening the idea of community is evident and therefore also of a fairly uniform approach respecting what, around what this community of intent is going to be created, because we cannot just say cinephiles.
We talk about humanity today, about anxiety, acceptance, communication and vocation, and yes, these things are all connected to each other. The perfect moment to fully understand this connection was offered on Saturday evening, with the co-director Sam Crane in the theater for the screening of that cinematic miracle called Grand Theft Hamlet (award winner Best Documentary Feature al SXSW this year) that beyond the context that will have “triggered” the gaming fans of GTA and not only does it hide not too well all the realism of lives in a pandemic, never shown, never really concrete, revealed only through the sighs and sarcasm of an interminable role game (400 hours of filming). That life is a collection of NPCs that we have to blow up in the area?
Maybe. For the rest, if we hadn't been here this weekend, we would probably have been busy with a thousand things, we would have been exhausted by infinite system bugs. How do we realize this? I couldn't be happier to sink into the silence of a screening or a talk, just listen, and really activate my brain.
Also because since I set foot in the ADI Museum it has been clear that it is not a place dedicated to monoculture experts. By celebrating content on the platform it has been expanded to cover and discover new areas, further connections. This is why it becomes very easy to understand the grand finale with Margherita Vicario And Dade (stage name for Davide Pavanello, voice of Linea 77 and musician of Salmo etc etc etc) who explain the making of Glory! Vicario's first work as a director and we understand how it was a truly challenging test, made by those who know music well, to seek an even stronger union between music and cinema, storytelling. Complete with a final piano performance by Margherita e Galatea Bellugiprotagonist of the film, in the piece written for her by the singer (in reality, says Vicario, after an enormous sentimental disappointment, but do you see in the end that nothing is ever thrown away?).
So yes there was music, and to put it in my opinion, apart from a few excellent exceptions, it also demonstrated how the dimension of cinema and the music that is connected to it, in this country, is predominantly Roman as a starting point (and even in the room, it was clear that a good part of it came from under the Rubicon). There was music, even more than a DJ set and two talks. He was omnipresent in the first ones, in the shorts. It was like seeing the sea from the mainland, or wherever we can't see it clearly.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
