The Italian Cultural Institute of Melbourne and the ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image), in collaboration with Milano Design Film Festival, present the Milan Design Film Festival at ACMI. One of the most important Italian festivals dedicated to design and architecture is coming to Australia in order to present some examples of the latest trends in these sectors in Italian industry.
The Festival aims to underline how the history of a culture is the history of design because design defines the very foundation of a way of doing things and imagines a possible future. The challenges, innovations, experiments faced by Italian design have given shape to machines, furnishings, objects and buildings, seeking to combine the uniqueness of the product and its reproducibility.
The screenings will offer an overview of the universe of Italian design. They will allow you to get to know the designers, to find out about industrial research, to visit the industries themselves, and to analyze the phenomena and social contexts underlying certain practices. In this way, it will tell the story of a rich and deep-rooted culture that still has the ability to deliver the best-known design in the world today.
The Festival will open with Carlos Saura’s film ‘Renzo Piano: Architect of Light’ (2018) and the Australian premiere of two documentaries by Davide Maffei on the Italian innovator Adriano Olivetti, both from 2020 (‘Paradigm’ and ‘Perspective’).
Other films that will be screened include:
- ‘Disco Ruin’(2020) by Lisa Bosi And Francesca Zerbetto, a survey of Italian club culture that charts the rise of iconic clubs, producers, DJs, styles and genres spanning four decades, from 1960s clubs to American-style discotheques, disco culture, funk and rave. They also address the subject from from an architectural and design perspective, including interviews with architects Ugo La Pietra and Pietro Derossi, among others, describing some of the design innovations of historic clubs. While some of these legendary ‘spaceships’ still survive – the ‘crystal pyramid’ of Riccione’s ‘Cocoricò’ reopened in November 2021, for example – Bosi sees the abandoned structures of other clubs such as Milan’s ‘Picchio’ and Turin’s ‘Ultimo Impero’ as a kind of modern Pompeii;
- ‘Gioja 22’(2020) by Stefano De Felici focuses on Melchiorre Gioia, a street in Milan and a neighbourhood that has been profoundly altered by skyscrapers in recent years;
- ‘The Importance of Being an Architect’(2021) by Giorgio Ferrero and Federico Biasin, a film that tells the story of Antonio Citterio and Patricia Viel, co-founders of the ACPV architecture and design studio;
- ‘Milano 20/21’(2021) by Maurizio Dalla Palma, a short film that uses images, environmental sounds and music to map how the perception of Milan, in Italy’s industrial north and its surroundings, changed during the Covid-19 pandemic;
- ‘Openings’ (2021)by Francesca Molteni and Mattia Colombo. This medium-length film deals with the concept of ‘thresholds’ in architecture and philosophy and explores the relationship between outdoor and indoor spaces in a journey along the historic Via Emilia;
More information at iicmelbourne.esteri.it
