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Quadratura

Quadratura is the first 16mm film signed by Sara Bonaventura - for the album Quasai, by the sonic artist, performer and independent researcher Francesco Fonassi (Spettro, Villa Recordings, Canti Magnetici), composed at the EMS in Stockholm on Buchla 200 synthesizers, produced and mixed by Fonassi at IAC, Malmö and Spettro, Brescia and digitally mastered by Marta Salogni in London.
Inspired by dark ecology and the Mandel'štam's poem of the voice over, the 16mm film evokes the loop of systemic predator-prey models, starting from microscopic beings - didinium and paramecium - passing through plankton, jellyfish, insects, fish, crustaceans and human apex predators. The found footage comes from a collection of educational films by the American Coronet, Ecological biology, an attempt to spread ecological thought at the end of the 70s. I intervened analogically on the edited material, scratching the Darwinian parable highlighting its shadows that obscure the stars, and so the delicate balance of complex ecosystems. The piece bends the original meaning of the didactic video, with a bitter twist through the scratched montage and the poem of the voice over.

  • Sara Bonaventura
    Director
  • Francesco Fonassi
    Composer
  • Les Giants
    Label
  • Marta Salogni
    Mastering
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Music Video, Short
  • Genres:
    Analog, Found footage, 16mm
  • Runtime:
    3 minutes 26 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 12, 2024
  • Country of Origin:
    Italy
  • Country of Filming:
    United States, United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    16 mm
  • Aspect Ratio:
    4:3
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Braziers International Film Festival
    Oxfordshire
    United Kingdom
    World Premiere
  • Ibrida Festival
    Forlì
    Italy
    Italian Premiere
  • Melted Film Festival at Dutch Design Week 2024
    Eindhoven
    Netherlands
  • LABOCINE, CINEMA FROM THE SCIENCE NEW WAVE, October Issue: THE ECOSYSTEM
    Brooklyn, NYC
    United States
  • Los Angeles Super Shorts Film Festival
    Los Angeles
    United States
    Best Experimental
  • Brussels Independent Film Festival
    Brussels
    Belgium
  • Fisura Experimental Film Festival
    Mexico City
    Mexico
  • 26th Dresdner Schmalfilmtage
    Dresden
    Germany
  • Toronto Film Week
    Toronto
    Canada
  • Doc.London, Documentary Film Festival
    London
    United Kingdom
Director Biography - Sara Bonaventura

Sara Bonaventura is an Italian visual artist and educator.
She works at the intersection between visual and media arts, lens based media and new media. As independent videographer she has been collaborating with performers and musicians, directing clips, ads, curating visuals.
Her video works have been screened worldwide; at the NYC Anthology Film Archives, the San Francisco Independent Short Film Festival, at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Asolo Art Film Festival, at Studio 303 for the Montreal Nuit Blanche, the Miami New Media Festival, the Athens Digital Arts Festival, at Rome MACRO Museum, the Cinemateca do MAM in Rio for Dobra Festival, the MOMus in Thessaloniki for Videolands curated by Miden Festival, the itinerant Time is Love screening curated by Kisito Assangni, the Mexico City CODEC festival, Other Cinema at San Francisco ATA Gallery, the LA Echo Park Film Center, the Boston Cyberarts Gallery and more.
She won the Veneto Region Award at the 10th Lago Film Fest and a merit for the 2019 Sino per NIIO Illumination Art Prizes, with one of her work displayed in one of the world biggest public screen in Hong Kong; she has been selected for several residencies, i.e. in 2016 by Joan Jonas at Fundacion Botin (Santander, Spain). Recently selected for the ISEA 2019, the International Symposium for Electronic Arts, in Gwangju, South Korea and the Visible Evidence XXIX - Documentary Ecologies, in partnership with FilmForum 2023 in Udine, Italy.
She recently released her debut documentary, Forest Hymn for Little Girls, screened at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival and the Ortigia Film Festival among others.

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Director Statement

(voice over - poem by Mandel’štam)
I am cold. Transparent Spring dresses

I am cold. Transparent Spring dresses
Petropolis in verdant down.
But like a medusa, the Neva's wave
Stirs up in me a slight aversion.
Along the northern bank,
The headlights speed away.

Steel dragonflies and beetles are flying,
Golden pinpoints of starlight glimmer,
But not one of those stars will kill
The heavy emerald of the water's wave.

II

We shall die in transparent Petropolis
Where Persephone reigns over us.
We drink with every breath the deathly air
And every hour is our last.

Terrible Athena, goddess of the sea,
Remove your mighty helmet of stone.
In transparent Petropolis we shall die,
Where Proserpine rules, not you.

(Osip Mandel'štam)