Country: Italy, USA, Canada
Year: 2023
Duration: 90'
In the eyes of an artificial mind, the last thirty years of David Rumsey, spent amassing one of the biggest historical maps collection in the world he secretly calls his poem, seem like an unexplainable quest. It will follow him on a road trip confronting with the ghosts of his past an the end inching closer.
Biography
film director
Andrea Gatopoulos
(Pescara, Italy, 1994) graduated in 2016 in Modern Literature, and then founded the publishing house and production company Il Varco and produced 23 short films, 4 feature films and the edition of 11 books. He is the artistic director of Il Varco – International Short Film Festival and founded the monthly screening Short Days in Rome and the Abruzzi’s film screening New Abruzzi Cinema and the film distribution Gargantua Film. His productions featured in more than 120 festivals all around the world. He shot Materia Celeste (2019) and Polepole (2021), and in 2022 presented Happy New Year, Jim at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes. In 2020 he worked alongside Werner Herzog for his film Accelerator in Leticia, Colombia, in which he developed the filmed correspondence Letters to Herzog and the short film Flores del precipicio. In 2023 he participated in Locarno Spring Academy with Radu Jude, where he made the Eschaton Ad.
FILMOGRAFIA
Materia Celeste (cm, 2019), Letters to Herzog (cm, 2020), Polepole (cm, 2021), Flores del precipicio (cm, 2021), Happy New Year, Jim (cm, 2022), Eschaton Ad (cm, 2023), A Stranger Quest (doc, 2023).
Declaration
film director
“In the age of satellites, where the Earth can be explored with a smartphone and space travel has proven increasingly utopian, the human race has lost its Pillars of Hercules to overcome, the magic of an adventure in an unknown horizon. In the beginning I wanted to make a film about this feeling, trying to understand how human beings had replaced this instinct which was part of the species from the first moments and which is present in all of us like a sort of stumped limb that still tickles. I read that sapiens probably succeeded in supplanting Neanderthals due to their ability to map territories and orient themselves effectively. I became passionate about maps. I found traces of that lost feeling there, in the old maps where in unknown lands you could see monsters and amazing drawings. And so I ended up on David Rumsey’s website, an endless digital archive of historical maps, assembled with a particular taste. Doing some research I understood that it was one of the largest private collections of historical maps in the world, and from the first moment I thought that the aesthetic sense with which they followed one another was the work of an artist. When I saw that David had created his museum inside Second Life and that part of his work was also linked to technological advancements, I said to myself that I should get to know him.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR, SCREENPLAY, EDITING: Andrea Gatopoulos. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Antonio Morra. MUSIC: Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Kevin Braheny Fortune. SOUND: Tommaso Barbaro, Luca Canzano, Mattia Pontremoli. CAST: David Rumsey, Michael Moore, Abby Rumsey, Salim G. Mohammed, Nathan Tia, Kristina Larsen, Laura Krueger, Roddie Macdonald, Aj “Buck” Campbell, Steven Frontling, Emily Prince, Angus Pacala, Paul Saffo, Sophie Appel, Nadine Hunt. PRODUCERS: Andrea Gatopoulos, Marco Crispano, Marco Caberlotto, Lucio Scarpa. PRODUCTION: Il Varco Cinema, Kublai Film.
CONTACT: Gargantua Film administration@gargantuafilm.it
