Careof continues its dialogue with the digital video course at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, taught by Bruno Muzzolini, which in 2012 culminated in the project Coordinate ellittiche. In constant dialogue with the work of emerging generations and with the aim of activating the rich heritage of the Archivio Video, Careof becomes, for students currently attending or who have attended Muzzolini’s course, an extension of the Academy classroom—a place to deepen content, review work, and engage with the public.

Coordinate ellittiche thus continues in 2013 with a series of events, including talks and exhibition projects, aiming on one hand to explore the work of the artists presented in the exhibitions, and on the other to revisit some of the authors who were formed within that climate of mutual exchange and constant review.

The first stage is dedicated to the screening of Nioune nio far. Un Europeo in Senegal (2010/2012, duration 50’), a documentary film by Stefano Etter.

The young author, who as part of Coordinate ellittiche had presented one chapter of the work, returns to Careof to present the full version of the film but also to share the experience of coitempichescorrono, a new Milanese collective of videomakers that produced Nioune nio far.

Nioune nio far (in Wolof language “We are together”) tells the journey of a European in Senegal. The attempt is to reveal not only the social and cultural peculiarities of the Wolof people but equally the traits that unite and allow recognition of a shared humanity. Five surahs from the Quran (Al-Falaq, Al-Asr, Al-‘Adiyât, Al-Qâri’Ah, Al-Qadr) open the chapters composing the film. Each surah serves to illustrate a phase of human life, drawing on the symbolic and evocative capacities of the local daily life: a baptism ceremony for the beginning of life, learning at a Quranic school for children, the dance of the false lions marking the transition from adolescence to adulthood, salt extraction along the shores of the Pink Lake for maturity, and finally the nighttime preaching of the Baye Fall for the late stage of life.

The foreign and paradoxical nature of these lands, balanced between modernity and archaism, between the search for Westernization and the desire to preserve ancient roots, allows the documentary to operate on a double level of meaning: through the play of differences, to glimpse those traits of our culture of which, due to excessive familiarity, we are unaware; through the similarities, to reflect on the needs and elements of crisis that characterize the human condition, regardless of the contingencies of time and place.

On Thursday, January 17 at 6:30 pm, the author and producers Guido Ingenito, Sami El Kelsh, and Chiara Tagliazucchi will engage with the audience to deepen the themes of the documentary, discuss issues related to its production, and share an experience of independent videomaking.

On the occasion of the documentary presentation, other works produced by coitempichescorrono will also be visible at Careof: Da nessun’altra parte directed by Sami El Kelsh, a stop-motion animation short film from 2012 inspired by Lettera di un papà preoccupato by journalist Marco Formigoni; the music video Problema digestione by the group Luisenzaltro, 2012; and the video spot for the contest Vola Alto. Cittadini si nasce? produced for the Associazione Marco Formigoni, 2012.