Country: Italy
Year: 1991
Duration: 44'
What is "time off" in a person's life? Is it a voluntary interruption and a pause? Or is it an unraveling and an accident that can make you go back and forth during work time (or during the time of life)? That is, is it an empty area where you can think up at least metaphorically the principle of not returning, of veering away, or exiting off stage? Time Off is a 44minute video that could be extended into a featurelength film or easily enough, into a short theater piece. This choice is open to its director Daniele Segre and to its protagonist Carlo CoInaghi. The video handles the question of going back and forth between an inside and an outside. Inside there is the norm, normality control and also being controlled. Outside there is anomie, and that which is broken and resistant. There is a going away from the rules. The in and outsides are described as the liminal and perhaps complementary borderlands between the adventure of living and its ability to be presented dramatically.
Fortysixyearold exactor Carlo CoInaghi is called up again into the focus of Segre's videocamera in order to talk about himself and the steps he took in his existential and professional path. In the sixties, he was connected with the workshop of the Little Theater of Milan. In the video, hard, tightknit, irreverent, and yet very human monologue issues forth. Colnaghi is both its subject and object. This monologue says a lot in general, but speaks more about theatrical space, that strong and terrifying perimeter It is a magical and mysterious place. It can make the forbidden appear and then contain it, neither taming nor exorcizing it.
The video, with its solid composition and recognizable narrative structure, escapes from the tight cage of documentary film and from the illusion of cinema vérité. Time Off is a multifaced and polysemeous film text. It should be questioned with the same courage and the same unnerving intensity that it uses to question and to assault its audience.
Biography
film director
Daniele Segre
Daniele Segre (Alessandria, Italy, 1952) began his career in photography, before debuting as a director in 1976 with the documentary Perché droga. He published the book of photographs Ragazzi di stadio and founded the production company I Cammelli. In 1983, he directed the feature-length fiction movie Testadura, which competed in Venice. It was followed by other films, including Manila Paloma Blanca, Lisetta Carmi - Un’anima in cammino, presented in Venice in 2010, and Sic Fiat Italia, which was presented at the 2011 Torino Film Festival, where in 2014 he also presented Il viaggio di Carlo, in 2015 Morituri and in 2016 Nome di battaglia donna.
FILMOGRAFIA
Perché droga (coregia/codirector Franco Barbaro, mm, doc., 1976), Ragazzi di stadio (mm, doc., 1980), Testadura (1983), Vite di ballatoio (mm, doc., 1984), Manila Paloma Blanca (1992), Come prima, più di prima, t’amerò (mm, doc., 1995), Sto lavorando? (mm, doc., 1998), Via due macelli, Italia - Sinistra senza unità (2000), Volti - Viaggio nel futuro d’Italia (tv, doc., 2002), Vecchie (2002), Mitraglia e il verme (2004), Conversazione a Porto (doc., 2006), Morire di lavoro (doc., 2008), Lisetta Carmi - Un’anima in cammino (mm, doc., 2010), Je m’appelle Morando - Alfabeto Morandini (mm, doc., 2010), Sic Fiat Italia (doc., 2011), Il viaggio di Carlo (cm, doc., 2014), Morituri (2015), Nome di battaglia donna (doc., 2016), Ragazzi di stadio, quarant’anni dopo (doc., 2018)
Cast
& Credits
Director: Daniele Segre.
Cast: Carlo Colnaghi.
Production company: I Cammelli s.n.c. Cammelli Factory s.c.r.l., via Cordero di Pamparato 6, Torino, tel. 747948.
Cast: Carlo Colnaghi.
Production company: I Cammelli s.n.c. Cammelli Factory s.c.r.l., via Cordero di Pamparato 6, Torino, tel. 747948.