Filmography

by Caludia Zanfi. Con testi di Franco Vaccari

Solo show, film and video events

-“Franco Vaccari: film sperimentali, Libreria Rinascita, Modena, 1968
- Experimentalni filmovi, Bitef, Galerija 2I2, Belgrado, 1968
- Cinema italiano indipendente, Club nuovo teatro, Milano,1969
- Film di Gianfranco Brebbia, Sirio Luginbuhl, Franco Vaccari, Galleria Paolo Barozzi,Venezia, 1970
- La placenta azzurra, Galleria Blu, Milano, 1970
- TRIGON 73, Neue Galerie, am Landesmuseum, Graz, 1973
- Nuovi media, Centro Documentazione e Ricerche Jabik, Centro Internazionale di Brera, Milano, 1974
- Camel Award. Artevideo & Multivision, Rotonda della Besana, Milano, 1975
-Rencontre internationale ouverte de video, CAYC, Buenos Aires, 1975
-Cinema d'artista e Cinema sperimentale in Italia I960-I978, Parigi, 1975
- Cine qua non, Giornate internazionali di Cinema d'Artista, Cappella di Santa Apollonia, Firenze, 1979
- Camere incantate, Palazzo Reale, Milano, 1980
- Soffici notti, rassegna di videoarte nel parco, Reggio Emilia, 1983
- Memoria del video, PAC, Milano, 1988
- Il cinema d'artista in Italia. Dagli anni Sessanta agli anni Ottanta, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Roma, 1991
- Cinema oggettivo, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Marsiglia, 1995
- Pop videoart-videoazioni, Magazzini Generali, Milano, 1998
- Gratta e vinci, Artforum Gallery, Merano, 1998
- Arte video storica, Casa Furlan, Spilimbergo (PN), 1999 .
- RE-PLAY.International Media Art in Osterreich, Generali Foundation, Vienna' (2000)
- Via Emilia, Corte Ospitale, Rubiera (RE), 2000
- MoViE: Modena Video Eventi, Provincia di Modena, Modena, 2001
- Fuori schema. Film, video, video installazioni, web I966 – 2001, Care of/Viafarini, Milano; Galleria Civica di Modena; Museo Laboratorio Università la Sapienza di Roma.
- Fuori Schema. Film e Video 1966-2002, Locarno 2003, 56° Festival Internazionale del Film.

 

Underground

1966/67

16 mm, transferred onto video

Black & White,

15'

From basements and lavatory walls, this graffiti is to be taken as a kind of anonymous poetry we sometimes come across.

The blue placenta

1968

8 mm, transferred onto video

colour

sound

10'

Through the montage of different television clips, we are shown the birth of the world out of an initial state of inarticulate chaos, the ensuing triumph of form and order, and lastly the destruction which leads back to the original state.

Windoscope

1969

8 mm, transferred onto video

colour

sound (Silence out of order)

2' 4''

Monuments are monumental because they are solid, still and untouched by the passing of time. However, it takes very little (a coloured paper streamer and a piece of chewing gum) to show that the wind - that is, time – is passing. Especially if the person who sticks the chewing gum to the monuments is a friend who is no longer with us.

Slow Dogs

1971

8 mm, transferred onto video

Black & White and colour

Soundtrack taken from "Atom Heart Mother" by Pink Floyd,

12'

Stray dogs filmed in slow motion, interaction between the film camera and the dogs, who clearly feel observed. Observation is always perturbing for the subject.

Feedback

1972

1/2 inch videotape, transferred onto video

Black & White

12'

Two media made to interact: video and Polaroid.
(produced by Luciano Giaccari )

Experiment with time

1973

1/2 inch videotape, transferred onto video

Black & White

9'

Even the simplest of subjects, like a walnut moving on a white sheet of paper, doesn’t allow us to memorise its movements. But if this nut is cracked, the moment then becomes irreversible; the direction of time’s arrow is clear. But if then, unexpectedly, a little worm crawls out of the cracked nut, the question becomes intensely complex because the worm carries its own sense of time which is not comparable to our own.

The electronic beggar (or “The means is power”)

1973

1/2 inch videotape, transferred onto VHS

Black & White

sound by the artist

Continuous tape used for a video-installation. A man begging for alms is filmed before being replaced by a monitor showing a recording. On the screen, appear the words "DER BLINDE KOMMT GLEICH" (The blind man will be back shortly).

Fragmented Film

1973/76

from pieces of 4-photo strips

I had a poster put up in all the photo booths in Italy saying that I was looking for new faces for a coming film. The film was never made; the work consists of all of the passport-size photos that the aspiring actors left for me in the booths. This is a film made up of people who have only ever seen their own part of it.

Pylorus (Marilena double face)

1974

8 mm, transferred onto video

colour

sound by the artist

6'

I see a girl in the marketplace. I follow her. She stops to buy some fruit. She chooses a grape. The camera closes in on her mouth as she eats it and follows the grape down as far as the pylorus.

Via Emilia is an Airport

2000

VHS

Color

sound

16'

Along the Via Emilia, immigrants watch television from their own countries. The prostitutes under the street lights think of their far away homes. The Emilians put aeroplanes in their front yards and dream of escaping.
(produced by Linea di Confine, Rubiera –RE-)

Hunger for Wind

2001

Installation using video-projection.

Synagogue of Trnava, Slovak Republic

After the Jewish community of Trnava disappeared in the Nazi concentration camps, the Synagogue has been used in the last few years to house exhibitions which up until now have been dedicated to the memory of the holocaust. I kept this in mind when planning my installation, but in the spirit of that strange book in the Bible called “Ecclesiastes” or “Quoelet ”, which seems to deny all transcendence. As it says, “…and so all is empty nothingness, and a hunger for wind”. This is where I took the title Hunger for Wind from. In the preparation of the exhibition, several strange coincidences occurred. For example, it seemed to me to be almost a sign of destiny to find a photo from 1937 of the children of the Talmud school of Trnava. I had the photo blown up and put it up in the apse of the synagogue, while a video projector projected images of peacocks onto the floor. At night, a floodlight beam – one of those visible from miles away which are used to mark the presence of a night club – shone up into the clouds.

Debora’s Album
2002
VHS
Color
Sound