Raphaël Cuomo & Maria Iorio - Undead Voices
Undead voices
2019
Italia, Svizzera
Documentary, colour, sound, 39'
Directed by Maria Iorio, Raphaël Cuomo
Undead Voices focuses on the archive as a subject rather than a repository of material, and invites us to reflect critically on the absences it encompasses, on the politics of knowledge, on possible alternative ways of writing history. The starting point is a Super 8mm amateur film, Donne emergete!, made in 1975 by filmmaker Isabella Bruno. Examination of the reel, recently rediscovered and consigned to the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia ANCI, revealed that the film is, according to archival criteria, damaged beyond repair. Reviewing its devastated chemical emulsions, the project exposes the effects of the marginalisation of “minor cinemas” and the dissemination or destruction of the material culture related to the movements of contestation in Italy in the 1970s. It nevertheless manages to retrieve the ghostly sequences documenting feminist demonstrations and assemblies, gestures of resistance and love, as well as the several songs that constitute the soundtrack – that reveal strange and transgressive invocations of undead voices calling out to us from the afterlife.
The video installation – that also includes banners and historical material – emphasises the spectral, hauntological quality of cinema and becomes an experiment with its potential for reanimation. The film production creates a temporality in which past and present feminist artistic practices can reach out to each other across time and resonate together. It invents a form that combines different generations and registers of images, interweaving narration and song, breaking the hierarchy between the semantic and the vocal.
This first version is the result of discussions with film historian Annamaria Licciardello. It has developed through a series of collective listening sessions and collaborations with performers Alessandra Eramo and Anna Frei aka DJ Fred Hystère. The project will continue with additional research into feminist archives, with filming sessions on the lakeside of Lago di Vico (where Isabella Bruno lived the last years of her life), and with conversations with several of the protagonists involved in the cine-clubs and feminist movement in Rome.
TECHNICAL DATA SHEETS
a film by Maria Iorio / Raphaël Cuomo
with
A Frei aka DJ Fred Hystère
Annamaria Licciardello
voice performance
Alessandra Eramo
musical reanimations
Anna Frei aka DJ Fred Hystère
voice
Maria Iorio
camera
Raphaël Cuomo
editing
Raphaël Cuomo / Maria Iorio
sound recording
Maria Iorio
translation
Simon Chapman
Maria Iorio
stage design
Mona Kuschel, Couturereal
sources
Donne emergete! (Isabella Bruno, 1975, Super 8mm);
8 marzo (Yuki Maraini, published in Canti dei donne in lotta 2, 1975);
Ma verrà un giorno (Yuki Maraini, version published in Siamo in tante, 1975; and version published in Canti dei donne in lotta, Movimento Femminista Romano, 1975); and a sample of
Bestie infinite (Caterina Barbieri, 2018) mixed by DJ Fred Hystère
with the kind collaboration of
Careof
Archivio Nazionale Cinema Impresa – Cineteca Nazionale
with the support of
Careof
Archivio Nazionale Cinema Impresa – Cineteca Nazionale
FMAC Genève
Pro Helvetia
thanks
Martina Angoletti, Caterina Barbieri, Isabella Bruno, Liliana Gianneschi, Gruppo cinema Alice Guy, Mariangela Michieletto, Ilaria Magni, Tullio Morganti, Diego Pozzato, Alessio Robino, Elena Testa
special thanks to
A Frei aka DJ Fred Hystère
Annamaria Licciardello
BIOGRAPHY
Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo are two artists and filmmakers. Favouring a collaborative praxis and long-term research, their recent projects engage with past and present global mobilities and unfold the entangled histories shaped by those movements of life, (post)colonial encounters, migrating forms and sounds. Investigating the conditions under which hegemonic historical narratives are produced and can be challenged, their films manifest unheard voices, diasporic experiences, resistant subjectivities. New knowledges become perceptible and can be shared through translation processes, performative archival practices, the aesthetical and political dimensions of listening. Integrating curatorial methodologies in their work, they have created film programmes, cinema situations and exhibitions that revisit the historiography of the expanded field of moving image practices and "minor cinemas" – experimental, amateur, feminist, decolonial. Iorio/Cuomo have presented their work internationally in various exhibitions and film festivals, including: Biennale de Lubumbashi #7; How To Find Meaning In Dead Time (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin) in the framework of Archival Assembly #1 (Arsenal, Berlin); Cronache di quel tempo (Istituto Svizzero, Palermo); Manifesta 13 Parallèles du Sud (Marseille); Documenta 14 Public Program (Athens); If Not For That Wall (CiC, Cairo); Quadriennale 16 (Rome); Logica del passaggio (Querini Stampalia, Venice); Europe. The Future of History (Kunsthaus Zürich); Twisted Realism (Argos, Brussels); Chewing the Scenery (54th Venice Biennale); Der Standpunkt der Aufnahme (Arsenal, Berlin); The Interpreter (Les Complices, Zürich); The Maghreb Connection (Townhouse Gallery, Cairo), as well as Alternative Film/Video (Belgrade); Courtisane; DOK Leipzig; FID Marseille; Ji.hlava IDFF; Pravo Ljudski Film Festival; Torino FIlm Festival; Visions du Réel – where their last film Chronicles of that time was awarded the Special Jury Award (national competition) in April 2021.
