Elegia italiana

2006
Elegia italiana
is a filmic work by Roberto Paci Dalò, created after Italia anno zero, a scenic and musical project by Roberto Paci Dalò and Olga Neuwirth conceived and presented across Europe in 2004 and 2005. Like Italia Anno Zero, Elegia italiana is also a meditation on the timelessness of Fascism in the “Bel Paese”, which develops from texts by Antonio Gramsci, Giacomo Leopardi and Pier Paolo Pasolini. For these authors cynicism, hypocrisy, foolishness and egoism are peculiar and intrinsic characteristics of the Italian people.

As Roberto Paci Dalò explains, the work reflects on Italy as a pre and post-fascist country. The shots of Paci Dalò taken in Rome and in Predappio (Forlì), Benito Mussolini’s hometown, are followed by video images from the Istituto Luce archive. The film plays on the visual ambiguity between contemporary images and those of the past. The symbolic places of Italian Fascism of yesterday and today are evoked, such as the Colosseum and the balcony of Piazza Venezia, accompanied by disturbing close-ups of a grotesque Benito Mussolini. He is shown in his dictatorship while he pontificates, legislates and sneers both in solitude and with the Führer. A cold, omniscient voiceover penetrates the film’s texts.

In Filmnero

From 13 April to 18 March 2016, Elegia Italiana is on display for Filmenero, an anthological review of Roberto Paci Dalò’s film works at the Neapolitan gallery Al Blu di Prussia, together with other works such as Dust (2003), Petróleo México (2005), Atlas of Emotion Stream (2009), Ye Shanghai (2012), Fronti (2015), 1915 The Armenian Files (2015).

The twentieth anniversary of Giardini Pensili

In 2005 Roberto Paci Dalò presented a preview of Elegia italiana in Rimini on the occasion of the celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of the birth of the group Giardini Pensili. On 7 May the opera was screened at the Teatro degli Atti following Language is a virus, a meeting with the author in which Savina Fosca Fragliasso, Gabriele Frasca, Roberto Paci Dalò, Sandro Pascucci and Andrea Porcheddu took part.

Credits

Elegia Italiana
Italy, 2006

A film by
Roberto Paci Dalò

Produced and directed by
Roberto Paci Dalò

With
Natalie Cristiani

Voice
Sandro Lombardi

After texts by
Antonio Gramsci
Giacomo Leopardi
Pier Paolo Pasolini

Cinematography
Roberto Paci Dalò
Marco Tani
Nicola Vicenti

Editor
Pietro Lassandro

Music
Absolute Value of Noise
Roberto Paci Dalò

Animation assistant
Irene Aurora Paci

Co-production
Giardini Pensili
Velvet Factory

 

Thanks to
Giorgio Baralla
Ambra Galassi
Gabriele Frasca
Ernesto Molinari
Donna Molinari
Davide Montecchi
Chiara Nano
Buckhard Stangl

Filmed on location in
Rome
Predappio (Forlì)

Specs
25 min, PAL, B/W, stereo, 1:33:1

This film is based on the staged concert Italia anno zero created in 2004 by Roberto Paci Dalò and Olga Neuwirth.