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A documentary that restores to the world, five hundred years after his death, the universal and sensitive genius of one of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance: Raphael Sanzio. Guided by the art historian Luca Tomìo, we decided to start our journey from the Renaissance atmosphere of Raphael’s birthplace, the Duchy of Urbino, to retrace, from the very beginning, Raphael's artistic education. From a young age, he found himself confronted with giants of the Renaissance art such as Piero della Francesca and Antonio del Pollaiolo, in the workshop of his father Giovanni Santi, also an excellent painter of the Urbino court.

The lagoon of Grado as seen and loved by the poet Biagio Marin. People, things, the sea, the seasons, seagulls: everything filtered through a poetic lens that transcends reality to recreate moods, visions, passions, and love for one's homeland.

A dramatic, solemn and refined work, "Per Firenze" spread throughout the world the cry for help that was rising in those hours from the city of Dante and Brunelleschi, giving rise to one of the greatest phenomena of solidarity that has gone down in history under the name of the "mud angels."

The baobabs of Africa and the olive trees of Southern Italy: what connects these two great trees, both parts of such distant worlds and cultures? An ancestral symbiosis has kept them intertwined with humanity and history for millennia; a fabric of religious beliefs and legends keeps them at the center of ancient symbols and rituals. Their fruits’ richness and the thousands of uses that communities have been able to find in the shadow of their mighty branches make them precious and irreplaceable. Today, even their suffering and their progressive decay unite them tragically, both victims of climate change caused by those who have always fed on them.

An electronic edition of some Super8 film intended to be projected at the concerts of Steven Brown.

Homosexuality has been condemned for centuries. But why? What do some people find offensive about the homosexual behavior? Meet a man who was convicted for the murder of an homosexual, along with the president of 'Jurists for life', the spokesperson of 'la Manif pour Tous' as well as the national representative of 'Standing Sentinels' and the spokesperson of 'Forza Nuova'.

The film is an observation of the migrant experience; from crossing the Mediterranean Sea out of Libya to settling in Paris-based squats. In a view free from prejudice, we quickly see how the experiences of migrants vary in extremes during the different stages in their journey to a better life.

Cipria is a ghost film: three Italian women who lived during fascism had told their lives hoping they could become a film, but the war had shattered the dream. We didn't even have an image of them: only the stories, still current, of their lives, which had been waiting for eighty years to be seen and heard. The challenge was to visualize their stories with footage shot between the 1920s and 1940s and new footage, to give each of them a face, a voice and a body.

Raphael, Yervant Gianikian's father, survived the Armenian genocide in 1915 in Eastern Turkey. In April 1988, while living in Venice, he sat for his son's camera and read an excerpt from his memoirs, translated from Armenian into Italian.

An old woman relives her life through words.

During the filming of Arabian Nights (1974), Pier Paolo Pasolini talks about his passion for protecting the complete form of ancient cities and shows us Orte and Sabaudia. Part of a TV Series documentary in 8 episodes.

An Italian short movie.

"Terre Emerse" is an investigation above the sea level. "Terre Emerse" is a road-trip in which Antonio Angelucci, architect and researcher, is looking for whom reside besides water and rivers in peripheral areas between Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia. Those areas, reclaimed first from the sea and then from the swamp at the beginning of XIX century, are today particularly subjected to river floods and sea storm.

Scicli, a small Baroque gem in southern Sicily. With 33 days to go until Easter Sunday, the inhabitants are preparing to celebrate the holiday. "L'Uomo Vivo, il Gioia" (The Living Man, the Joy): words used by the people of Scicli to invoke the Risen Christ, a symbol that is part of the community's identity. An 18th-century statue created by Benedetto Civiletto. Peppe, Franco, Angelo, and Claudio are four bearers of the Gioia, whose friendship was born right under the "Vara." They can be considered the emblem of the bearers, that is, ordinary and simple lives that come together for a common passion, the Gioia, which is the main topic of their discussions every day. Peppe works with marble, Franco is a sales representative, Angelo is a farmer on the family farm, and Claudio is a truck driver who travels all over Italy. The film follows their daily lives about a month before the Easter holidays, showing the preparations for the festival and the meetings that precede the big day.

For doctors “MARASMA” was a diagnosis: a state of deep organic deterioration, total loss of strength. In mental hospitals, people did not die of mental illness, but of marasmus. This is what the medical records say, which today reveal the most difficult stories: those of the last among the weakest, children and women. Through their testimonies we can also give voice to those who do not know, who do not want or can not remember.

This is the journal of an expedition that, starting from the oasis town of Djanet, embarked on a 12-day journey guided by a member of the Algerian Tourism Club to discover the rock paintings of Tassili n'Ajjer in southeastern Algeria. These paintings date back to prehistoric times (10,000 to 5,000 years ago) and are located on an uninhabited rocky plateau whose highest point reaches 2,158 meters. Considered one of the largest and oldest "open-air rock art museums" in the world, the Tassili n'Ajjer boasts a particularly rugged landscape: the vast rocky plains, which sometimes give way to "forests" of monoliths, are riddled with akbas (holes in the escarpments accessible only on foot or by camel) and numerous faults and canyons. The Tassili n’Ajjer National Park was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1982 and classified as a biosphere reserve in 1986.

On 12 October 2023, in a performative journey through the urban planning and fascist architecture of EUR and its colonial spectres, the present, the past and a utopian future led the public through a discovery of Via Cristoforo Colombo. EUR is the result of a fascist urban planning system which was meant to inscribe into the city’s road pattern straight trajectories of expansion toward the Mediterranean Sea, as a symbolic representation of the regime’s colonial project. On October 12th, a day celebrated in many countries as Columbus Day, such references were poetically and irreverently subverted by Feel Good Cooperative, as a collective and desiring body of more than one hundred people was guided on a performative journey to re-signify those sites of exploitation and power through a polyphony of voices.

Massimo D'Anolfi and Martina Parenti recount the birth and development of Bestiari, erbari, lapidari, their latest film, presented out of competition at the Venice Film Festival in September 2024.

The documentary was made on the occasion of the Seventh International Congress on Large Dams held in Rome in 1961.

The Mozart Orchestra, founded by the late Maestro Claudio Abbado, brings together the best classical music performers in the world by mixing promising young talent and well-established solo artists. This documentary offers a unique look at Abbado's work and on the classical music players job in contemporary times. The film narrates, both from the musical and human point of view, the public and the private life of musicians. Also included is a long and unreleased interview with Maestro Abbado and concerts and rehearsals shooting in Bologna, Lucerne, Vienna, Madrid and Palermo.

30 minutes of moving clouds above the earthly elements: buildings, tower blocks, high voltage pylons, etc. Their movement reminds us that time and life flow inexorably.

This documentary explores the tranquil history of Italian surfing along with the passion and dedication of the pioneers who shaped it.

The film arose from an encounter with Mario Botta during the 2013 Architecture and Memory exhibit held at the Charlotte, North Carolina Bechtler Museum of Modern Art which was designed by the architect. The exhibit gathered and then proposed to the public the Swiss architect’s most significant projects spanning the gamut from his first single-family homes, original expressions of the School of Ticino, to his large public buildings, libraries, theatres, museums, churches and synagogues which have been built across the globe and features more than 90 works. The film is a dialogue on the themes which characterize Mario Botta’s vision and practice: his relationship with history and the territory, the designing of collective spaces, encounters with the leading protagonists of the 20th century. The interview, conducted in Mario Botta’s studio in Mendrisio, is replete with photographic materials, designs and sketches which document his “spaces of memory”.

They were frightened. Suddenly the sea became calm.

La Moda del Liscio tells a composite story, articulated around major themes (the dance master, the orchestral players, the singer, the club manager, the TV, the epigones of an era) that constitute the epic of ballroom dancing, its anti-heroic dramaturgy, its somewhat vague and kitsch aesthetic. It is a choral story, populated by great figures but above all by orchestras, because ballroom dancing is not a genre for soloists. And there has never been any talk, with regard to ballroom dancing, of 'concerts', but only of 'shows', also choral, each with its own genre dynamics and costumes in which America is always cited. This documentary, through repertoires and interviews, with a focus on the private dimension of those who were the protagonists, wants to reconstruct not a history but a system of memories, an intimate and at the same time public memorial of a country that was happy.

The aphotic zone is the deep and dark region encompassing most oceanic waters, into which light hardly penetrates. The Lithuanian artist and filmmaker Emilija Škarnulytė has made a hypnotic film, somewhere between documentary and imaginary account, in which the oddness of the underwater world is confronted with the sonic landscape of a distant civilisation.

Fabrizio Ferraro’s homage to Saint Sebastian, subject of three paintings by the Italian early Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna, starts in the present day with colorful images of tourists in the ancient ruins of the Palatino and the Foro Romano in Rome. Suddenly we are transported to another dimension, now in black and white, the same place but another time, suggesting the film’s inherent circularity.

A farming community gathers on a plateau on the border of three regions for the funeral of traditional agriculture. It’s a film to ward off the disappearance of a millenary culture.

A documentary about Raffaello.

This portrait of a remarkable woman and her unusual environment seems to have a very profound effect on nearly everyone who sees it. The film further strengthens the reputation of veteran documentarian Schreiner, who's quietly and steadily established himself among Europe's most respected practitioners of non-fiction cinema. But the film is by no means an example of an ‘auteur’ imposing his individual vision upon the world. Instead it's a remarkable example of intense collaboration between artist and subject, one so close that such traditional distinctions and labels seem inappropriate.

Pasquale Donatone, aka Tony, is the taxi driver who drives us through America land of dreams and Italy land of broken dreams. Tony is a backward deported immigrant. He left italy 40 years ago when he was child and he became American but he did some mistakes, more than one. The biggest was to sign to be deported, instead of go in jail for ten years because of its second work: loading illegal mexicans immigrant and delivery drugs. Now he was deported in a small town in South of Italy, and he has to wait ten years before he can return legally to US but ten years aren’t easy to live. The waiting time is too long and Italy is a country without hopes. For sure he can’t wait anymore. A story of immigration, drug, love and sense of union in a country that change you inside, the United States of America.

In a southern town, San Cataldo, a woman gives birth to a child, but the latter is destined to live a life of hardship like the other members of her family.

An Italian movie.

Experimental short

Tutti Fratelli. L'Utopia di Henry Dunant, is dedicated to the figure and untiring activity of the Geneva philanthropist who sacrificed his family fortunes to the idea of the Red Cross [fallen to poverty, he lived off a modest income which only just allowed him survival]. Cima, in telling the story of the founder of the Red Cross, resorts to original documents, photographs, and images shot in the places where Dunant lived (from Geneva to Solferino and San Martino, from Marseille to Zurich, to Provence, to Tunisia). There comes to light an enthralling story which “tells”, thanks to a “clear and shared exploration of his existential itinerary”, the greatness of a man who was wrongly banished in the shade. (Achille Frezzato)