Country: Italy
Year: 1970
Duration: 75'
What pushes me to make cinema is the conglomeration of processes-elements that constitute it, a revelation I never cease marveling over: the magic of film that reacts to light, impressing onto it the reality to which it has been exposed; the developing phase that reveals the image and fixes it, a chemical-dynamic process that is like shooting the scene a second time (if not for the first time, because by developing I am assisting at the dynamic creation of a certain reality-scene), then the editing and the projection, in which the single frames become movement once again, rendering it visible. Thus, to me, the succession of single phenomena in their unity is what I try to represent with/in the “film.” In this sense I make a selection of real moments of reality that I film and I have made films like Fractions of temporary periods, 360° di cinediario, Relazione filmata, Morte all’orecchio di Van Gogh... Only recently have I begun to glimpse the possibility of a wider cinematographic “representation,” expanded like a “harmonic unity,” in the sense that it takes me into account, in the role I effectively carry out as a human beingpartly active within reality, a spectator working at what I am filming, the author of the reality I am representing like a show and a film-process, in projection and also in the selfrepresentation of a presentspace that is real and total, since it an ex-entro unity. The beginning of this process-phase of mine can be seen in Zukie as a latent embryo. In itself, Zukie goes in other directions besides unity- reality because it is split into self-individuations (imagephysical reality, sounddreamlike reality). What I was talking about above is what appens in me and in the film Erinnerung an die zukunft that I am simultaneously developing as an internalexternal (ex-entro) expression into the completion of myself as a “harmonic unity” in the common, one Reality, that joining point between physical- real Conscience and dreamlike-real Interior. (P. Bargellini)
Biography
film director
Piero Bargellini
Pierfrancesco Bargellini (Arezzo, 1940-1982), also known as Piero, bought his first movie camera when he was 20 and pointed it at his youthful passions: competition cars and motorcycles. A few years later he met Marco Melani, who became his cinema companion and an actor in his films. He started to make a name for himself in the world of amateur filmmakers and won a prize at the festival of Montecatini. One of the members of the jury was Massimo Bagicalupo, a founder of the Cooperativa cinema indipendente, and he invited Bargellini to enter the brand-new world of Italian underground cinema. While working as an agronomist at the Val di Chiana Irrigation Office he continued to make films in his free time, but shortly afterwards, with the notice and support of the magazines “Cinema & Film” and the group “Filmstudio 70,” he left his job and moved to Rome. Here, during the early 1970s he worked occasionally for RAI and carried on his activity as an independent director in the world of underground cinema. During this period he suffered a series of misadventures with the law and ended up fleeing to Turkey with his wife Oriana and their daughter Rebecca in 1975. After returning to Italy he continued experimenting, jotting down his discoveries in a series of notebooks and fruitlessly trying to find financing for various projects for experimental programs for Rai. Bertolucci and Storaro consulted with him during preparation for La Luna (1981) to try to resolve problems with various special effects. But Bargellini progressively lost contact with the world of cinema and shortly thereafter his troubles with the law began. He was found dead, officially because of an overdose, at dawn on July 10, 1982.
FILMOGRAFIA
Il teschio; La fiera dei sogni; L’incompiuta; Club 3P Battifolle (1965), Anno 2000 (1965), La striscia (1966), ...vi prego di accettare questo semplice bouquet di parentesi appena sbocciate ((())) (1966), Questo film è dedicato a David Riesman e si intitolerà «Capolavoro» (1967), Morte all’orecchio di Van Gogh (1968), Fractions of Temporary Periods I parte: Ovvero Plans- Séquences per una bambina (1965-1968), 360° di cinediario (1968), Tempo-Tempio-Ritratto (1968), Macrozoom (1968), Baraccone (1968), Water-Closet ovvero attesa per una defecazione (1968), Stricnina (1969- 1973), Fractions of temporary periods II parte: Due ore pomeridiane della bambina (1969), Trasferimento di modulazione (1969), Nelda (1969), Un ottofilm di Pierfrancesco Bargellini (1969), Zukie (1970), Gasoline (1970), Bacino Casa del lupo o di Tonino Massimo e Piero (1970, esiste solo in stato di frammento/only fragments), Oracolo (1970-1971, distrutto dall’autore nel 1974/destroy by the director in 1974), Erinnerung an die Zukunft (1970, non terminato/unfinished), Due silenzi e un’armonica (1971), Dove incominciano le gambe (1974)
Dispersi/Lost: Saluto (gennaio/January 1968, 8-16mm, 18fts, sonoro/sound, 3’30’’, bn/bw), Relazione filmata (1968-1970, 8mm, 24fts, sonoro/sound, 13’, col.); Abbandonate ogni illusione, preparatevi alla lotta (co-regia/co-director Marco Melani, Stefano Beccastrini, 1969, 16mm, 24fts, 40’, col.-bn/bw)