Design and manufacturing of a set design/scenography for a Danilo Correale’s film
Diranno che li ho uccisi io, Danilo Correale’s film, is the result of an in-depth investigation on the italian cinema from the '50s to the '80s of the 19th Century. For different reasons, it has remained hidden in some archives as screenplay, or in directors' mind as simple idea, without becoming a “real” film because of censorship. From Correale’s researches and readings, among various film scripts, it emerged themes and taboo such as the European colonialism, the feminism, the armed struggle, the Resistance, the difference of social class and religion, besides different cinema styles, that have inspired the realization of this film. This film ideally connects six film scripts, but also six film types and six under-represented topics, beginning from the fall of the fascism up to the birth of the italian private TV.
Diranno che li ho uccisi io is the title of the Film that Danilo Correale has made, as part of a solo exhibition that places sculptural elements, an artist's publication and unpublished documents on the research process that led the artist to the creation of the work alongside the projection.
The film is the result of an in-depth investigation into Italian cinema from the 1950s to the 1980s, which for different reasons remained boxed in archival folders in the form of a screenplay, or in the minds of directors in the form of an idea, without ever having become a film for censorship reasons.
They will say I killed them is a film that tries to reconstruct fragments of this forgotten cinema in an immersive play of light, shadows and camera movements. Among the various screenplays that emerged from the research and readings that fueled Correale's desire and investigation, themes and taboos such as European colonialism, feminism, armed struggle, resistance, class difference and religion, as well as different filmmaking styles, crop up to inspire the making of this film.
The set production project, realized by GISTO, was born as an open system composed by a series of mobile elements that take part in the film both as single elements and as complex systems, allowing multiple action possibilities. The set design project satisfies the necessity to create a series of scenes that could be modified, adapted and calibrated according to the heterogeneity and the complexity of the six film scripts. Diranno che li ho uccisi io is a winning project of the first edition of the Italian Council (2017), a competition created by “Direzione Generale Arte e Architettura contemporanee e Periferie urbane (DGAAP)”- Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, to promote the Italian contemporary art in the world.
the project that we made was born to take shape from the very plot of the film, the colors the elements that are present in the scene are suggestions, shapes , memories that arise from the script itself, and were identified and selected during our initial dialogue phase with the artist
Correale's film is structured tells six scenes, then six stories, settings, sets that needed specific elements, to have their own identity but at the same time to help hold the narrative together.
Do from the first dialogues we understood that a classic structure (6 settings created inside 6 different rooms) would have been not only limiting, but perhaps not correct to tell the sense of this work, which in fact is a declared mesa in scena, between art cinema and theater.
We therefore thought of deconstructing our scenic design, thus working with an "open system of objects " that would allow the 'artist then to create the necessary sets, backdrops through a series of possible simple compositions
Made thanks to individual elements with their own identity but part of a collection, of a system of objects in dialogue that allowed them to be joined through simple junctions and to compose more or less complex scenes, which allowed to modify, compress and dilate spaces during the recording phase, thus approaching theatrical machines
This design approach thus allowed for the creation of not 6 but many more possible, potentially infinite scenarios.
This also gave the opportunity to compose both classical and experimental scenarios.
Diranno che li ho uccisi io has availed itself of the valuable collaboration of many public and private entities, institutional partners and individuals to whom our sincere thanks go.
Danilo Correale's work became part of the public collection of the MART Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto and was also presented in 2019 at the exhibition space of the MAC Museum in Belfast, a partner in the project.
A special screening of the film was in the spaces of Magazzino Italian Art, in Cold Spring - New York in 2018
Alessandro Mason, Matteo Giustozzi
Danilo Correale
Martina Angelotti
Careof
Yidan Huang