The War today in Front of Guernica: the film by Gianikian-Ricci Lucchi in Milan on 15/6
“Before Guernica (Director’s Cut)” and the new masterpiece film by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, the internationally renowned filmmakers not only won the Golden Lion at the Art Biennale a few years ago, but also the very prestigious Fiaf Award, awarded to Scorsese, Bergman and a few others directors. But beyond the awards received, which are never enough for the masterful work of the most revolutionary couple of filmmakers in the history of avant-garde cinema, and which to better define them, if it were possible, I resort to the precious words of biographer Robert Lumley , who writes in the book dedicated to them, “Entering the Frame”: “Two protagonists of avant-garde cinema and contemporary visual art. The work of a life, politically radical and aesthetically revolutionary.”
The film by Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi is a work of layers, a work that with each frame opens doors to new worlds, often unprecedented, ferocious and at times magical.
In the vast program of the Venice Film Festival 2023, 80th edition directed by Alberto Barbera, their latest film was central, “Frente a Guernica” by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, which from its title is a Work of Art . Besides, if Picasso would have loved her, perhaps he would have made wonderful paintings of our two filmmakers, Yervant and Angela, or he would have immortalized them on his canvases simply to thank them for having created them after a visit to the Reina Sofia Museum, and having seen his Guernica in 2014, a cinematic work of such historical importance that it has no equal in the history of cinema. Only the genius of Yervant Gianikian could reach so far and so high, far because it starts from the Spanish civil war of 1936, far because it tells and revives stories of women, children, men so buried that the moment they surprise us on the screen we remain enchanted, bewitched , captured. Yervant’s work has gone so high, he has reached heights of art unattainable by anyone, because his mastery, invention and poetry are such that there cannot be a clone of him. After all, the author together with Angela Ricci Lucchi of extraordinary films, and at the top of the rankings of the most important films of the century drawn up by the New York Times, such as “Dal Polo all’Equatore,” or “Pays Barbare”, just to mention two pillars of their work, Yervant and Angela could only outdo themselves with this latest stunning and magical creation: “Frente a Guernica.”
There are many frames that should be described, told, a single frame of them obtained from the “analytic camera” technique is worth more than many fictions put together and scattered around the world. Watching the film, with an explosive beginning that in a single frame recounts three years of a ferocious pandemic, you see a bat and a monkey who almost seem to be playing, and what deadly ‘game’ resulted from that intersection? Among other things, Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi were precursors and visionaries in this too, that frame is from 1987. Many years before the pandemic broke out. But poets are known to be magical and visionary, as Rimbaud and Novalis have well written.
I don’t want to tell you about the film, it’s not possible here, because any narration of “Frente a Guernica” would be reductive, but I invite you on June 15th at 4.30 pm at the Godard Cinema, Fondazione Prada in Milan, to see it because after watching it you get better, despite the ferocity of the Spanish civil war, and the destruction of Guernica, and the desperation of mothers and children, and soldiers, we understand which side we are on, on one side there are the inhumans and on the other the humans. This film teaches and educates consciences to always and forever be on the side of humanity. It is a film against inhumanity, it is a masterpiece, I repeat, which tells about each of us, our fragilities, the political and social submission that we can all suffer from those who hold roles of power and political command, and this applies to all times . Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi, frame after frame, make us see the inhumanity of war and oppression in all its havoc, they clearly show us who is outside of humanity. Our artists paint an immense work. The gypsy child who asks for alms from a Westerner, the child with lots of hair and lots of desperation, the teenage child who shines the shoes of the same Westerner who shortly before gave alms to another child. Here the shoe shiner has the smile of an adult while cleaning his shoes, the purity of childhood in his gaze, the adult in the making in his body. He is Western-style submissive, he cleans, shines his shoes, but smiles at the camera of whoever is filming him. A smile of submission, of embarrassment, of someone who already knows a lot about the ferocity of men?
But I’ll start again from the beginning, that is to say from the title of the latest film by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, “Frente a Guernica,” who at least once in their life has not found themselves in front of a work of art in search of of emotions, sensations, readings? Usually the most curious when faced with a painting turn to a guide or an audio guide, many instead let themselves be carried away by their own instinct and look at the work often incredulous, amazed, disoriented, distracted or even bored… but what happens when two masters of avant-garde cinemas find themselves in front of Guernica, in front of Picasso’s work which has a name that evokes female faces and pictorial beauties? And instead that work tells a drama, the Spanish civil war, the destruction of a city in the heart of Spain by the fascists. Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi’s film allows the viewer, both of the painting and of their cinematographic work, to tear apart Picasso’s canvas. If I close my eyes and stand in front of Picasso’s work at the Reina Sofia Museum, after having seen Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi’s film at least once, each piece that makes up Picasso’s Guernica transports me to unimaginable places, to primitive worlds, and in the current world devastated by price increases and wars. The journey that this jewel of a film allows the viewer to take is immense. Thanks to them I can’t wait to go and see Guernica, to be in front of Guernica and to read that dramatic work through the hundreds of thousands of frames of Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi’s film, a film that is an extraordinary painting of women, children, unthinkable places, from China to Japan, from France to Spain, this film dives into Picasso’s work and takes us around the world in 126 minutes of density.
It is a film about the innocent and for the innocent, the protagonists are the people who populate the cities, the towns, the microcosms and the macrocosms. It is a film for the rebels, the dispossessed, for those who suffer the arrogance and oppression of war. There is a scene that comes to mind as I write, the seamstresses sewing, the young and old pedaling with the sewing machines, basting, looking at the viewer from the heights of their innocence. I am in front of Picasso’s work, I continue to look at the canvas, I cannot stop thinking about the power of the layered narrative of the film by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, after having seen it, Picasso’s work has a meaning that shocks me, that it makes me travel inside the frame, like the title of Lumley’s book dedicated to them.
Go see the film on June 15th in Milan, and then go in front of Guernica in Madrid, at the Reina Sofia Museum.
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