On the occasion of the 39th edition of Bergamo Film Meeting, from April 24 to May 2, the section ENCOUNTERS: CINEMA AND CONTEMPORARY ART – born from the collaboration between the Festival and The Blank Contemporary Art – is aimed at highlighting the intersections between the world of cinema and that of contemporary art and it will be converted into three digital appointments that will be broadcast on social media channels. Guests will be the cinematographer Luca Bigazzi (Milan, 1958), the actress, director, dubbing actor, LIS coach and organizer of CINEDEAF – International Festival of Deaf Cinema Deborah Donadio (Policoro, 1993), and the visual artist Gian Maria Tosatti (Rome, 1980) together with the director Lorenzo Quagliozzi (Rome, 1999).

All events will be broadcast on Bergamo Film Meeting Facebook and The Blank Facebook pages.

TALK WITH LUCA BIGAZZI
Saturday 24 April, 3 pm
Luca Bigazzi in conversation with Claudia Santeroni, coordinator of The Blank, on the connections between the making of movie scenes, the organisation of contemporary art performances and the evolution of light in painting and cinema.
Cinema originated from the combination of different disciplines and inventions: the mirror, the camera obscura and photography, a plurality with which the History of Art was also confronted. By tracing their history and interpreting it from a new point of view, the conversation with Luca Bigazzi aims to highlight gbsimilarities and differences between these two areas of contemporary culture.

TALK WITH GIAN MARIA TOSATTI
Tuesday 27 April, 3 pm
Presentation of the movie My Heart is a Void, the Void is a Mirror – Odessa Episode made on the shores of the lake of Odessa by Gian Maria Tosatti, in conversation with Cristina Rota, The Blank Project Manager, and Lorenzo Quagliozzi.
My Heart is a Void, the Void is a Mirror – Odessa Episode is a movie born from the backstage of a big environmental work realized in Ukraine by Gian Maria Tosatti during the hardest phases of the Covid-19 pandemic. Within the film, some editing elements taken from the history of Russian cinema are in dialogue with the creation of an original artwork with which the film itself merges its boundaries. In the conversation that follows the teaser of the film – which is still in production – Tosatti and Quagliozzi discuss the sense of evolving a simply documentary into something hybrid that linguistically articulates itself in a more complex and unique way. Моє серце пусте, як дзеркало – одеський епізод (My Heart is a Void, the Void is a Mirror – Odessa Episode), in collaboration with Izolyatsia Platform for Cultural Initiatives, is part of the Diptych of Trauma, a project promoted by The Blank Contemporary Art and realised thanks to the support of Italian Council (7. Edition, 2019), a programme by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture aimed to promote Italian contemporary art in the world.

TALK WITH DEBORAH DONADIO
Thursday 29 April, 3 pm
Interview with Deborah Donadio conducted by Sara Tonelli, head of the educational projects at The Blank, on the relationship between cinema, deafness and accessibility, through topics such as accessible educational opportunities in the field of cinema, the meaning and value of deaf cinema, the distribution of works by deaf directors on the market, the inclusion of deaf talent in the film circuit and the promotion of the knowledge of deaf language and culture through the art of cinema.

Thanks to the interpreting service in LIS and subtitling, the appointments are also accessible to the deaf audience, which The Blank addresses through LISten Project.

The section of BFM37 dedicated to the contaminations between cinema and contemporary art will offered a close-up look on the work of Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, a Swedish duo awarded with the Leone d’Argento at Venice Biennale in 2009, for the first time in Bergamo.

The exhibition, curated by Stefano Raimondi and Claudia Santeroni, shows the artists’ fantastic worlds in the Sixteenth-century spaces of Porta Sant’Agostino.

The partnership between Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg began in 2004; their work is presented in large immersive installations, bizarre landscapes populated by people, animals and plants portraying the impulses and contradictions of the human soul.
Playing with the historical meaning of Porta Sant’Agostino as a transit point, the exhibition develops around a large projection and, at the same time, shows the sculptural research carried out by the artists.

Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg will meet the festival audience on Saturday March 9, 3:30PM at Cinema San Marco. During the event, a selection of video works will be available, allowing visitors to learn, through the words of the protagonists, the main implications related to their work.

The exhibition is promoted by the City of Bergamo and is organized by Associazione The Blank, Bergamo Film Meeting and Lab 80 film.
In collaboration with Giò Marconi (Milan) and with technical contribution of Dielle Ceramiche and the partnership with La Torre tappeti.

Nathalie Djurberg (Lysekil, Sweden – 1978) and Hans Berg (Rättvik, Sweden – 1978) live and work in Berlin. In 2009, they participated in the 53rd Venice Biennale “Fare Mondi”, winning the Silver Lion. Their works were at the centre of solo exhibitions in the most important artistic institutions, including the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, the MART in Trento and Rovereto, the Tate Britain in London, the PICA in Perth, the Moscow Garage and the Walker Art Center of Minneapolis. Their works can also be found in public collections such as: Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Kunsthaus Zuerich, Zurich; Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmö; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; MoMA – Museum of Modern Art, New York; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Borås Konstmuseum, Borås; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

The section of BFM37 dedicated to the contaminations between cinema and contemporary art will offer a close-up look on the work of Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, a Swedish duo awarded with the Leone d’Argento at Venice Biennale in 2009, for the first time in Bergamo.

The exhibition, curated by Stefano Raimondi and Claudia Santeroni, will bring the artists’ fantastic worlds in the Sixteenth-century spaces of Porta Sant’Agostino.

The partnership between Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg began in 2004; their work is presented in large immersive installations, bizarre landscapes populated by people, animals and plants portraying the impulses and contradictions of the human soul.
Playing with the historical meaning of Porta Sant’Agostino as a transit point, the exhibition develops around a large projection and, at the same time, shows the sculptural research carried out by the artists.

Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg will meet the festival audience on Saturday March 9, 3:30PM at Cinema San Marco. During the event, a selection of video works will be available, allowing visitors to learn, through the words of the protagonists, the main implications related to their work.

The exhibition is promoted by the City of Bergamo and is organized by Associazione The Blank, Bergamo Film Meeting and Lab 80 film.
In collaboration with Giò Marconi (Milan) and with technical contribution of Dielle Ceramiche and the partnership with La Torre tappeti.

Nathalie Djurberg (Lysekil, Sweden – 1978) and Hans Berg (Rättvik, Sweden – 1978) live and work in Berlin. In 2009, they participated in the 53rd Venice Biennale “Fare Mondi”, winning the Silver Lion. Their works were at the centre of solo exhibitions in the most important artistic institutions, including the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, the MART in Trento and Rovereto, the Tate Britain in London, the PICA in Perth, the Moscow Garage and the Walker Art Center of Minneapolis. Their works can also be found in public collections such as: Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Kunsthaus Zuerich, Zurich; Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmö; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; MoMA – Museum of Modern Art, New York; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Borås Konstmuseum, Borås; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

On the occasion of the 36th edition of the Festival, The Blank and Bergamo Film Meeting dedicate the section “Incontri: Cinema e Arte Contemporanea” to Jonas Mekas (Lithuania, 1922), poet, artist and director, founder of the New American Cinema Group and creator of the Anthology Film Archive.
The artist will be the protagonist of “Jonas Mekas – Personale“, promoted by the City of Bergamo and organized by The Blank and Bergamo Film Meeting.
Sebastian Mekas, son of Jonas, will meet the audience of the Festival at Cinema San Marco on Saturday 10th March at 3.30 pm after the projection of “Outtakes” (2012) and the documentary film “The Internet Saga, Jonas Mekas” (2015) and will bring a special message from Jonas.

The exhibition “Jonas Mekas – Personale”, curated by Stefano Raimondi and Claudia Santeroni, sees the transformation of the exhibition environment into a place where, thanks to an engaging set-up, some of the artist’s most significant films coexist with images of a more cinematic nature.

“Jonas Mekas – Personale” is realized in the renovated venue of Palazzo della Ragione: the exhibition compares itself with the historical building and exploits its new exhibition possibilities, specially designed for this place.

The exhibition aims to present the complexity of the means of expression chosen by Jonas Mekas, a versatile artist with eclectic interests. The double screening of the video “Seasons” (2017) dominates the room: a video composed of fragments of his entire cinematographic production.
The frames taken from the artist’s video works, impressed on the glass plates, belong to the series “In an Instant It All Came Back to me”, while the photographs of “Birth of a Nation” are extracts from his famous 1997 film of the same name. The photographic section is completed by “To New York with Love”, the series of images dedicated to the city that has been the stage of Mekas’ work.

“Jonas Mekas – Personale” is permeated by a track composed by the artist, which acts as a background to the entire exhibition: the musical aspect has been maintained in relation to the artist’s history, that reminds how the singing has always been part of his life since his childhood. To conclude the exhibition, an island dedicated to the publications by Mekas, freely available to the public to offer a unique opportunity to enter the artist’s collection, including “My Night Life” where the artist, faithful to his biographical style, narrates his dreams made between 1978 and 1979, asking his friend Auguste to illustrate them.

“Jonas Mekas – Personale” is promoted by the City of Bergamo, Bergamo Film Meeting and The Blank and it is made possible thanks to the indispensable support of A Palazzo Gallery (Brescia), Francesco Urbano Ragazzi and Studio Luca Bombassei.

On the occasion of the 35th edition of Bergamo Film Meeting, inaugurated the second retrospective of ENCOUNTERS: CINEMA AND CONTEMPORARY ART, two events dedicated to the relationship between art and film, organized thanks to the collaboration between The Blank and Bergamo Film Meeting.

The leading figure is Franco Vaccari (Modena, 1936), one of the most significant and important interpreters of the languages of contemporary art. During his career Franco Vaccari has pursued with great consistency, a work that is now extraordinarily relevant and inspiring for new generations, who recognize the value of his contribution and influence of his research.

The artist paied homage to the city of Bergamo with the unreleased video environmental installation Esposizione in tempo reale N.45 at the Sala alla Porta Sant’Agostino and placing outside Il Mendicante Elettronico.

On Saturday, 11 March, at the Cinema San Marco, over forty years of research were examined through the projection of a selection of videos.

ESPOSIZIONE IN TEMPO REALE N.45
In Esposizione in tempo reale N.45 the video Buona Notte, showing a hearth with a fire, as it is consumed and crackles, is overlaid on the image of Alessandro Magnasco’s painting Lo scaldatoio di una frateria, dated 1725/1730. The projection of the fire enters into the pictorial composition, breathing life into it.

For Esposizione in tempo reale N.45, continuing research based on involvement and sharing, Vaccari invited several Bergamo artists to create beds in front of the projection, shelters in which to rest and dream, developed according to the artists’ respective languages and poetics.
The artists made ten new sculptures/beds, specifically designed to dialogue with the video Buona Notte. These dream-like installations will fit into the setting of Porta Sant’Agostino, built between 1561 and 1575, and the historic road leading to Bergamo’s Upper City.
The artists involved in creating the beds are Davide Allieri, Cinzia Benigni, Filippo Berta, DZT collective, Oscar Giaconia, Daniele Maffeis, Andrea Mastrovito, Giovanni Oberti, Francesco Pedrini, Maria Francesca Tassi.

Outside Porta Sant’Agostino there is Il Mendicante Elettronico, a video installation from 1973. On a cathode ray tube the words “Der blinde kommtgleich” (the blind man will be right back) appears on the screen, overlaying the image of a hamster in a hat. With the operation of replacing the flesh-and-blood beggar with a television set, Vaccari disorients the spectator and highlights the power of the media and the artistic gesture.

SELECTED VIDEOS
1966–67, Nei Sotterranei, 8 mm transferred to 16 mm and digital format, b/w, 6’56’’
1971, Cani lenti, 8 mm transferred to 16mm and digital format, b/w and colour, soundtrack by Pink Floyd, 8’38’’
2000, La via Emilia è un aeroporto, VHS, colour, soundtrack, 14’30’’
2003, Provvista di ricordi per il tempo dell’Alzheimer, video from photographic material, 21’57’’

The collaboration with Franco Vaccari has been possible thanks to the fundamental support of Galleria P420 in Bologna.

The Blank, during Bergamo Film Meeting 2016, presents:

Books on Shelves and Without Letters – Deimantas Narkevičius | 4th – 31th March 2016

Presentation of the environmental video installation Books on Shelves and Without Letters, by the Lithuanian artist Deimantas Narkevičius.
The concert of the young band Without Letters in a second hand book shop in Vilnius blends the mythical reality of music with different stories that live in the books on shelves.

Retrospective- Keren Cytter | 5th – 31th March 2016

Keren Cytter’s films destroy modern principles of cinema, searching for a balance between performance and theater. The artist plays with real notions and fiction, involving non-professional actors and cameramen. Her filmic representation adds a surrealist touch to existential concerns such as love, hatred and the human condition giving both a dark and comic reflection of the contemporary society.
Israeli artist’s retrospective is projected in the Auditorium of Piazza della Libertà.

Game
Duration: 9’19”

Experimental Film
Duration: 6’01”

Rose Garden
Duration: 8’55”

Corrections
Duration: 8’00”

Siren
Duration: 14’35”

Les ruissellements du diable
Duration: 10’46”