Categories
program 2023

Exterior Day (Esterno giorno)

Director Biography – Giulia Magno
Giulia Magno is an Italian filmmaker, art historian and curator based in Rome. Her films have been presented internationally, including at the ICA Miami, the National Galleries of Scotland, and the National Museum of Cinema. She has collaborated with institutions such as the ICA London and the MAXXI Museum in Rome to curate exhibitions exploring the intersection of film and contemporary art.
SYNOPSIS
Inspired by a famous exchange of letters between Michelangelo Antonioni and Mark Rothko, “Esterno giorno” is an experimental love letter to Italian cinema. Embarking on a journey in the footsteps of the characters played by Monica Vitti, the filmmaker poetically intertwines contemporary footage shot across Italy and the Jordanian desert with excerpts from Antonioni’s films, creating an illusion of continuity between past and present. From a metaphoric desert (the industrial area of Ravenna, where film masterpiece “Red Desert” was shot in 1964) to a real one, the physical spaces explored by the camera become psychological landscapes, states of mind, atmospheres. As the camera lingers on the architecture of La Cupola—the futuristic house in Sardinia designed by avant-garde architect Dante Bini in the 1960s for Antonioni and Vitti, then real-life partners—the line between reality and fiction starts to blur.
In collaboration with Archivio Michelangelo Antonioni.