Frente a Guernica (Director's Cut)
In its latest issue, the film magazine 24 images dedicates a special feature to the theme of our symposium, Film Archives Beget Films, to be held on April 28-29. In conjunction with this editorial coverage, and just ahead of the symposium, we are presenting a program entirely focused on this theme; the re-use of archival film footage in films. While not aiming to be exhaustive, the program highlights the diversity of practices from an aesthetic and historical perspective.
North American Premiere
The idea for my and Angela Ricci Lucchi’s film Frente a Guernica (Director’s Cut) arose from our visit to the Museo Reina Sofía on the occasion of the screening of Pays barbare in 2014. Our sensations on seeing Picasso’s Guernica, after the work’s return from exile, prompted us to look through the materials on Spain in our possession and described in our notebooks. (Yervant Gianikian)
Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi
Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi were two Italian filmmakers who collaborated on most of their work. From the 1970s onward, they produced numerous experimental and avant-garde short films, including perfumed films such as Alice profumata di rosa (1975), whose screenings were accompanied be the diffusion of aromatic essences that interacted with the film. In the 1980s, their focus shifted to manipulating existing films using found footage techniques, with a peculiar emphasis on war and colonial imagery. Their work has been featured in exhibitions and retrospectives in Paris, New York, Venice, and London. Outside of her filmmaking activites with Yervant, Angela pursued painting—some of her watercolors were exhibited during a retrospective of their work at the Centre Pompidou in 2015. Yervant continued his artistics practice alongside Angela until her dead in 2018. Following her passing, he completed a project they had started back in 2014, Frente a Guernica, which was released in 2023.
On our blog
À propos de Frente a Guernica (Ricci Lucchi / Gianikian, 2023)
L'idée du film Frente a Guernica (Director’s cut), réalisé par Angela Ricci Lucchi et Yervant Gianikian, est née lors de leur visite au Museo Reina Sofía en 2014, à l’occasion de la projection de leur documentaire Pays Barbare (2013). L'impact de leur rencontre avec le Guernica de Picasso, après le retour de l’œuvre de l'exil, les a poussés à revisiter les matériaux sur l'Espagne qu'ils possédaient et à revoir leurs carnets de notes. Le film se veut une réponse à la folie nucléaire que Picasso avait anticipée avec son œuvre emblématique.
