Octavia
Identifier
D.2012-08-0046
Date Of Production
2018
Abstract
A work created for the 2018 International Media Mixer by filmmaking duo Federico Francioni & Yan Cheng (Italy) and composer/musician Tomeka Reid (United States).
The International Media Mixer was produced by Chicago Film Archives in collaboration with Lab 80 Film - Cinescatti Archive with support from the MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund. In this cross-cultural artistic exchange, Italian artists were commissioned to make a new film using material from CFA’s collections and Chicago-based artists were comissioned to do the same using footage from a regional Italian archive, Lab 80 film – Cinescatti. Their creations premiered in Italy at the Bergamo Film Meeting and in the United States at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago as part of the 2018 Millennium Park Summer Film Series produced by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.
The International Media Mixer was produced by Chicago Film Archives in collaboration with Lab 80 Film - Cinescatti Archive with support from the MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund. In this cross-cultural artistic exchange, Italian artists were commissioned to make a new film using material from CFA’s collections and Chicago-based artists were comissioned to do the same using footage from a regional Italian archive, Lab 80 film – Cinescatti. Their creations premiered in Italy at the Bergamo Film Meeting and in the United States at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago as part of the 2018 Millennium Park Summer Film Series produced by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.
Description
Description provided by the artists:
A globe falls apart in the hands of children, on their first exploration. As we enter the forest, the images come towards us; then a storm catches the swimmers off guard. In the sky you can feel the signs of a war that was thought to be far away; a woman is waiting for a return, but everything is changing. Octavia is the city suspended over the void.
Babel grows vertically and horizontally, between past and future; as an archive of images. Looking at the material, the film was slowly composed starting from situations and sensations that, in some way, seemed connected to each other: the narration was born freely, following a path of meaning. There is a mythical past, the world of nature, and then the exploration of space, the loss of innocence, war and waiting. A city that changes and transforms continuously, while the images of the journeys remain superimposed but cannot be held back. Many of the sequences we encountered come from institutional films, sometimes from commercials; other images are more intimate. We have tried to isolate them in order to relate them. The idea of a suspended city that can only be seen from above, from the clouds, was already present in the material immediately, and it almost seemed to us that it could be one of the many invisible cities told by Calvino. In the end, when we came across his voice, we discovered that it was possibly Octavia.
A globe falls apart in the hands of children, on their first exploration. As we enter the forest, the images come towards us; then a storm catches the swimmers off guard. In the sky you can feel the signs of a war that was thought to be far away; a woman is waiting for a return, but everything is changing. Octavia is the city suspended over the void.
Babel grows vertically and horizontally, between past and future; as an archive of images. Looking at the material, the film was slowly composed starting from situations and sensations that, in some way, seemed connected to each other: the narration was born freely, following a path of meaning. There is a mythical past, the world of nature, and then the exploration of space, the loss of innocence, war and waiting. A city that changes and transforms continuously, while the images of the journeys remain superimposed but cannot be held back. Many of the sequences we encountered come from institutional films, sometimes from commercials; other images are more intimate. We have tried to isolate them in order to relate them. The idea of a suspended city that can only be seen from above, from the clouds, was already present in the material immediately, and it almost seemed to us that it could be one of the many invisible cities told by Calvino. In the end, when we came across his voice, we discovered that it was possibly Octavia.
Genre
Form
Dimensions
1920 px
x 1440 px
Related Collections
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