Pattini d’Argento – courtesy the artist and Piccolo Artigianato Digitale – Milano

Franceschini has always been working with video; the investigation of space through the movie camera lenses allows her for deconstruction from a peculiar viewpoint showing us new worlds, new visual, interpretational and emotional possibilities. The unveiling of new worlds through fragmentation of what is commonly visible is experienced as a journey into personal intimacy, memories and memory. Franceschini is attracted by fragments better for their signifier quality rather than for their significance: “I believe  the function of fragments is parallel to that of anecdotes: little devices helping memory stabilize, flow and fill all the gaps”.

Pattini d’argento – courtesy the artist and Piccolo Artigianato Digitale – Milano

By looking at Franceschini’s works, one can feel how every work comes from meetings with places, objects and people, which are finally raised to the state of a homogeneous work. The identification of the subject to be shot does not imply a choice – which is experienced by the artist as a mournful and painful act -, rather it comes out of a kind of methodological and conscious approach searching for a shifting order: “Choosing implies constriction of the visual field, blocking of horizons and loss of that kind of happiness one feels, sometimes, when confronting with the infinite possibilities of different universes. I try not to choose, I rather put things in order, go on consciously, piece by piece, and keep thinking that there exist infinite encounters, innumerable situations, multiple changes”.

Casa Verdi – courtesy the artist and Invisibile Film – Milano

The human figure – expect for those works as Pattini d’argento (2007) or Casa Verdi (2008) – is always missing from her videos, as if objects prevail. And it is thanks to the ‘activating’ quality of these objects – “by objects I mean a plethora of ‘things’: situations, places, interactions, artifacts and also living beings” – that the relation artist-outside world starts off, a relation which is probably also assisted by previous experiences, which are more or less conscious and more or less far in time.

A siberian girl – courtesy the artist and Ex Elettrofonica – Roma

It is probably with videos like It’s about light and death (2011) or The siberian girl (2012) that this evocative relation with objects gets materialized more clearly and profoundly. Both works, indeed, come from a collection of objects; the concept of collection is equal to that of editing in the sense that they both join fragmented elements together by juxtaposition (objects on the one hand and sequences on the other hand). This time, Franceschini works on groups of collected objects not to select them through the camera, but to reveal their new and more intimate narrative power in a dynamic and fluid flux with an always positive and evolutionary tension.

it’s about light and death – courtesy the artist and Vistamare/ Benedetta Spalletti – Pescara

Anna Franceschini graduated in Television, Cinema and Multimedia Production from IULM University of Milan; her background in film studies, which is not fundamental to understand her artistic career, effectively illustrates the will for confronting herself with the film language, bending the grammar and syntax of cinema to her own will power.

Early works, indeed, show more clearly her background in film studies: objects and people are part of a narrative. It is  with Untitled (Almost Lost) (2009) that Anna seems to be changing direction: in addition to the employment of Super8 film, she discovers a new narrative process which materialized into more powerfully abstract but at the same time evocative works, as if video would turn into a moving canvas.

Untitled (Almost Lost) – courtesy MNAM / Centre Pompidou – Paris

Starting from 2010, she has been working mainly with Super8 and 16mm, producing images which might sometimes appear dirty or saturated, though with an incomparable output thanks to the quantity of information retained by that kind of film. “I like the relation you have with the film when shooting: there is a tension because every waste (money, time, opportunities) is crucial; therefore, the level of attention is higher, there is indeed a chemical-physical change of matter and this is interesting. However, stocks all over the world are running out of film”.  The employment of Super8 film and 16mm is assisted also by short-term works.

Casa verdi – courtesy the artist and Invisibile Film – Milano

Video is the artwork that by its very nature allows the artist to define the duration of fruition, imposing a minimal time which is that of the viewing of the complete video. Usually works last for about 5-6 minutes on average and are screened in a loop. This time in Anna Franceschini’s works is defined partly by chance because of the necessities imposed by every different work and is partly established by Anna’s reflections which she describes as “comparative – more than stylistic – reflections around fruition of a film at the movie theatre and fruition of one or more films, or video, in a space dedicated to art”.

A siberian girl – courtesy the artist and Ex Elettrofonica – Roma

Her mastery of the technique and the research on poetry merge into Anna Franceschini’s videos contributing to the creation of unique works, which emancipate from the static quality of the screen impressing the retina and involving the senses through their strong evocative power.

The different lifes that Yasmin Fedda tells seen together seem to compose a variegated world of emotions and perspectives and hopes, distant in space and time, but concretely nearby in the representation of the Other. The Other told by Yasmin has never declared as such by either synonym of exclusion or marginalization, what clearly emerges from her work is rather as the other – intended as a different point of view, of experience, of culture or condition – can easily become a collective self, different each time, in which each person can recognize its own identity. On the other hand, is Boutrous the Syrian monk protagonist of the film Milking the Desert (2004) to reveal the crucial point in the Yasmin’s work: telling the relations between the Muslim and Christian communities Boutrous says, with tangible genuineness, which in deep “a person is a person”.

The Yasmin Fedda’s work, in fact, is focused on people, individuals symbol of springtime cultural.

Yasmin looks to these universes with authenticity and raw purity with through the camera, and it is evident in the two works exhibited last March in Rome for the group exhibition “Ides of March” at the British School of Rome: the award-winning Breadmakers (video of the 2007, filmed to the Garvald Bakery in Edinburgh, where a community of workers with learning disabilities, makes a variety of organic breads for daily delivery to shops and cafes in the city. The Garvald Bakery’s project is inspired by the Rudolph Steiner’s ideas, according to which the workers realise their potential for self-discovery and creativity in a social environment) and the unpublished Siamo Tornati/We are Back (2013) outcome of the roman experience.

Siamo Tornati/We are Back tells about the growing phenomenon of italian social occupations – Teatro Valle, Cinema Palace, and others – as a reaction to the cuts on public services and the unemployment significant increase. In roman district of San Giovanni the boxing teacher  Gianni other sports trainers and activists have come together to create S.C.u.P (sport e cultura popolare) a popular gym, school and community centre. I ask Yasmin why her decided to show together these two works that clearly address the theme of community as a place of positive growth: «because I felt that both films, in different ways, show how different communities are finding positive ways to deal with the issues they face. I found both projects inspiring and I felt they complimented each other».

The films are however stylistically quite different: Breadmakers is fully observational, without any voiceover or interview. The public can only look at the bakery, the bread and the social interactions while everybody is working. In Siamo Tornati/We are Back the main protagonist is Gianni; he explains what is the project S.C.u.P and why he realized that, and tells about this experience’s meaning for him and for the entire community. Yasmin select the players for her films in different ways adapting each time to the circumstances, this happen also in the editing phase where the style does not overlie the content, but is sculpted on it making every work unique and complete. It is in the film phase that Yasmin tends to propose always the same pattern of approach, spending long periods of time with the people who will film, this is in aid of her to obtain trust, and be able to film life ‘as it happens’.

Yasmin Fedda has palestinians origins, she lived in Syria and in different parts of the Middle East, after moved to UK and spent the first three months of 2013 in Rome at the British School of Rome, as winner of the Creative Scotland document24 Fellowship 2012-13. When I ask her if she feel herself a world citizen she answers: «It is sometimes hard not feeling rooted anywhere, but at the same time I enjoy feeling a part of many places and not any one place in the world».

Yasmin Fedda, Siamo Tornati/We are Back, 2013 http://vimeo.com/63646958