PIERO BARGELLINI or THE SUSTAINABLE PARADOXES OF ACADEMIC CINEMA CONSTRUCTION (WITH SOME EASTERN EGGS)

 

DESERTED ISLAND CINEMA

(FOR THE ROTTEN CINE-GOERS AND FOR THOSE WHO ARE ABOUT TO ROT)

I recently received an email from a dear friend from my "Facebook era". Jutta Pryor, a Melbourne video artist and respectable organizer of cultural events, decided to present my work at the prestigious Australian cultural institution "The Center Ivanhoe - Melbourne". Her unexpected (I hope this is no joke) gesture prompted me to reflect on the infantile idea of ​​a deserted island and the ideal partner for such a life scenario.

Thinking for a while (and excluding Jutta because of a possible “conflict of interests”) I came to the conclusion on which this video experiment is based and produced exclusively for Peter Tammer's blog "Friends of the Armchair Traveller" (you are on the address), which, along with David King and Bill Mousoulis, I am maintaining recently.  BEWARE: This one is depressing a bit:

Darko Duilo - Odessa Morning (2022)

Take this as a short introduction to the reminiscence on the cinematography of Piero Bargellini (1940-1982), a tragic figure of Italian experimental cinema whose work we still do not respect enough.

As a posthumous presenter of Bargellini's works at the Cine Club Split, I have created the promotional web announcement material based on the appropriate text by an unknown author, which seems to be the most relevant short note about the director (placed on the Internet after some Italian experimental cinema legends remembering event passed by and was signed with “Trep wrote in dxc”).

https://kinoklubsplit.hr/dogadanja/projekcija-piero-bargellini-experimental-cinema-from-italy-pt-2/

On this occasion, I am re-repeating that text in its entirety (with some understandable corrections made for better understanding):

Piero Bargellini was born in Arezzo in 1940. An agronomist, film lover and amateur filmmaker, he joined the “Cinema Indipendente'' Cooperative in 1968 and became one of the most important figures of Italian underground cinema. His films are intensely poetic and reflect artisanal wisdom, based on his scientific knowledge of optics and chemistry. He made films like “Morte all’orecchio di Van Gogh”, “Fractions of Temporary Periods”, “Trasferimento di modulazione”, “Gasoline” and “Stricnina”, all between 1966 and 1973, in a total identity of art and life. 

These works tell the personal Bargellini`s history in its own way and are (at the same time) the testimonies of most of the secret cultural protagonists of that time. They celebrate all the famous victims of the revolution of 1968. Ideally conceived as a dialectic interface for further investigation of Italian experimental cinema, Bargellini`s opus presenting is also the way we have chosen to remember Marco Melani (1948-1996) on the anniversary of his death. Marco, who was a friend and collaborator of Bargellini, and continues to be the inspiration and a “hidden” prompter, organized the first experimental cinema festival in Torino (1982), a commemoration for his friend Bargellini, who had recently passed away. His intent was to remove the label of “experimental”: “Bargellini`s cinema was cinema tout court, like that of Rossellini, Hawks, Bertolucci, Schifano, Brakhage and all the other filmmakers he loved.” 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbpAyXCXCTA

Piero Bargellini - Nelda (1969)

Possibly the most powerful and abstract Italian experimental filmmaker of the late sixties, he is predictably close to no information on him around. We previously shared a (subless) documentary about him and his brethren - “Schegge di Utopia Again” - thanks to Jean Marie Luce, who printed the DVDs. We're now able to share rips of most of his movies. All but one come almost straight out of the projector, so the quality is very good given the rarity of the material. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NkVNRWaclw

Piero Bargellini - Morte all'orecchio di Van Gogh (1968)

“Trasferimento di modulazione” is impressive in its special way. It’s a “porn” movie left in an early stage of development. The colors and blots you will see are not actually there, they are the effects of the reaction of the projector’s light with the dirt on the film. Obviously, a film like this changes and dies away a little at every show. So what you’re seeing is a three-dimensional slice (width-height-time of the movie) of a four-dimensional work (width-height-time of the movie-time of the consumption).

Piero Bargellini - Trasferimento di modulazione (1969)

And at the end of this post let me introduce three more underrated authors whose works I have recently found on You Tube:

Eddie Adamson

https://www.youtube.com/c/EddieAdamson/featured

Hans Mittendorf

https://www.youtube.com/@hansmittendorf/featured

Al Límite

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF0t1Dtfz5101_NzHHdl-CQ/featured

Still in love with a dentist girl?  Yes, I am. 

Greetings from Split, Croatia…

Darko Duilo

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