Director: Silvia Giulietti

Authors: Barbara Iannarilli, Giuseppe Galeone, Silvia Giulietti

 The Hidden angels of Luchino Visconti

There are many ways of framing a landscape, a face, as there are many ways to tell the story of a man, his life, his passions, his character, his movements, sending a message to the world.

“The Hidden Angels of Luchino Visconti” This is the title. It tells of the man, the great man and director that he was, through the eyes of his closest collaborators, through never-before-seen images of Mario Tursi’s personal photographic archives. He was the photographer who followed Visconti his entire life. In this documentary Visconti’s camera operators who have given back to us the vision of his genius and contributed to his greatness: in silence, without fanaticism or exaltation, and for this reason they are his “Hidden Angels”.

We are narrating the life of a man, his daily routines – less known by the official literature – seen through many of the frames shot by his “angels”, who bore witness to his way of living, of interacting, behaving as an artist in and around his creative world.

Luchino Visconti: a treasure for all of humanity. The studies, the analyses, the reflections proposed by those tasked with examining his thought, have been able to dissect even the deepest sensitivities of the artist, but never has this been seen from the totally unusual angle proposed here.

A work, in Visconti’s case, which is not only solitary, as can happen with a writer, a painter or a poet, but which has a “plural” dimension; which needs the help of many other persons to be brought to completion. This is how a movie is born. This is how the eyes of the “hidden angels” have given back to us what he was imagining.

Although Visconti did not consider cinema an art form equal to a figurative work or a poem, these being immune from the conditioning brought about by the “technical concept”, we know that his work was art. Yet, this is not the intent of our project and These are the men who have seen him at work and on breaks, and who have seen him interact and speak; who have seen him cut across human moods.

Every witness has his personal view of Luchino Visconti, filtering his emotional light through the lens of his own human and cultural experience.

Their narrations do not contribute to the achievement of “objective Visconti” in the constant search for a descriptive synthesis, as well as to a “living Visconti” through the recounting of a fact, an anecdote, an argument and its resolution, a way of doing, which bring him back for a moment among his work friends, as an artist and as a man. An emotional glimpse, then, in the search for those memories which are not found in cinema literature, perhaps because they are considered non-influential on the analysis, or devoid of the dignity of “memorable” stories.

A different look at the man, better yet, the looks at that “technical concept” which address strictly professional questions, but which concentrate on the life of the crew navigating in the adventurous waters of that “craft mans labor” which is cinema. Guided by their helmsman who is able of obtaining, with authority and knowledge of the destination, enviable results .

FESTIVALS

Fic Brasilia 2007
Roma Film Festival 2008
Milano Doc Festival 2008
Gran Jury Prize  – Noemart Film Festival 2010

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