Franco Angeli Film

In 1972 the Roman painter Franco Angeli (1935-1988) thought about organising an exhibition where cinema and poetry could fuse with painting. The exposition path had to be like a long gallery with a series of oversized and painted frames in order to accompany the viewer through darkness in a movie hall. Here a film made by Angeli had to be constantly screened, a sort of autobiography. The exhibition was only partially made, in the Galleria Sirio in Rome, without the final film (legend tells that Angeli sold the camera to give an unexpected present to a woman). After more than thirty years, his friend Luca Ronchi has tried to revisit the idea of the original film adding images and testimonies trying to describe an artist and an intense and popular era.

"It is not easy to make movies about artists; one needs a wide, indefinable and almost mysterious view. The mystery is compulsory when one speaks of creativity. In the case of Angeli, we had to tell about a life full of contradictions, funny and dramatic, difficult to comprehend. I have left this short video with an unfinished, uncompleted feeling, like a work-in-progress to be completed in the future" (L. Ronchi).