MARIA’S SILENCE
CESARE BEDOGNE
2019
: BIOGRAPHY
Cesare Bedogné is an Italian photographer, film-maker and writer. His first, autobiographical novel and his black and white photographs were at he basis of the film "Story for an empty theatre", which he co-directed with the Russian film-maker Aleksandr Balagura. He later directed the experimental/documentary short films "Maria's Silence", "The Last Step of an Acrobat", "Photographing New York". All these experimental films won numerous awards internationally and were screened in prestigious film festivals such as Art Visuals&Poetry in Vienna, the 75th Festival Internazionale del Cinema di Salerno, the L'Europe autour de l'Europe film Festival in Paris, the 69th Montecatini International Short Film Festival in Italy, the 14th Harlem International Film Festival in New York, the London Greek Film Festival, The Cinemistica Film Festival in Spain, the AMIIWorkFest in Vilnius, the Concrete Dream film Festival in Los Angeles and many others. He recently completed (March 2022) another experimental short entitled "Lost Images". Further information is available on the artist's website:
www.cesarebedogne.com
Together with Aleksandr Balagura, Cesare Bedognè is the founder of Flight/Mostra Internazionale del Cinema di Genova.
SYONPSIS:
“I have already been
A bush and a bird
A boy and a girl
A mute fish in the sea”
(Empedocles, Purifications)
This film is based on documentary material but is not, strictly speaking, a documentary film. Nor it is a work of fiction. The film rather appeared to us like a dream, not a nocturnal dream, but one which unfolded day by day while shooting. A dream shared between the photographer-director and the actress (or, better, the woman portrayed in the feature), which nevertheless seemed to follow its own, enigmatic necessity through which the daily shots joined almost magnetically, interweaving in a pattern of superimposed layers that unceasingly merge and dissolve one in another, in the constant flux, crystallization and reshaping of psychic interior. At a certain point, this dream seems to end but in fact it only opens up to another dream, or hallucination, where the film itself abruptly starts to burn, unleashing new and old visions - fragments of reality - until it is put out by a sudden storm and dissolves in a twilight of sea-waters. In this sense, the film is also a meditation on the elements, Water and Fire, Wind, Earth and Skin, inspired by a Sun-Eye that appeared almost by itself in one of the first shots and took possession of the narration, in the endless flow and unfathomable metamorphosis of all things and beings.