Stabat Mater
Stabat Mater is a work about motherhood and separation.
It is built upon the repetition, for fifteen times, of an eighteen seconds film.
The nude portrait of the woman, the artist herself, shown in the film is a painting by the artist’s former husband, Bernardo Siciliano.
The audio of the film is the mix of a dialogue in Italian, between the artist’s daughter and the artist’s former husband, with the first movement of Giovanni Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater.
The text of the Italian dialogue translated into English is superimposed over the footage in a gigantic sized type which grows smaller with each repetition until it disappears, while the voices subside and the music takes over.
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Marina SagonaDirectorCouscous
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Marina SagonaWriterCouscous
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Marina SagonaProducerCouscous
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Project Type:Experimental, Short
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Runtime:5 minutes 8 seconds
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Completion Date:November 30, 2021
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Production Budget:0 USD
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Country of Origin:United States
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Shooting Format:Digital
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Aspect Ratio:4:3
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
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Cadence Video Poetry FestivalSeattle
United States
April 17, 2022
USA Premiere
Award Winner -
London Rocks Film FestivalLondon
United Kingdom
November 5, 2022
UK premiere
Official Selection -
LA Independent Women Film AwardsLos Angeles
United States
September 1, 2022
Nominee -
Art Film AwardsSkopje
Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of
September 30, 2022
Honorable mention -
BIDEODROMOBilbao
Spain
October 10, 2022
Spain premiere
Semi Finalist -
Desenzano Film FestivalDesenzano sul Grada (Brescia)
Italy
October 8, 2022
Italian premiere
Official selection -
International Cosmopolitan Film Festival of TokyoTokyo
Japan
December 23, 2022
Japan premiere
Semi-Finalist -
Rio de Janeiro World Film FestivalRio de Janeiro
Brazil
November 18, 2022
South America premiere
Semi-Finalist -
Video Art and Experimental Film FestivalNew York
United States
October 14, 2022
Honorable Mention -
New York International Women FestivalNew York
United States
November 23, 2022
Semi-Finalist -
Dublin World Film FestivalDublin
Ireland
November 30, 2022
Semi-Finalist -
Philadelphia Arthouse Film FestivalPhiladelphia
United States
December 20, 2022
Semi-Finalist -
Blow-Up Arthouse Film Fest ChicagoChicago
United States
January 5, 2023
Semi-finalist -
Sunworld International Film FestivalSirkazhi
India
January 5, 2023
India premiere
Award Winner -
Fisura International Festival of Experimental Film and VideoMexico City
Mexico
February 14, 2023
Official selection -
Ribalta Experimental Film FestivalVignola (MO)
Italy
March 18, 2023
Best Script/Concept Award -
Sipontum Arthouse International Film FestivalManfredonia
Italy
March 31, 2023
Best Experimental, Film of the Season -
Harlem International Film FestivalNew York
United States
May 20, 2023
New York Premiere
Official Selection -
Bogotá Experimental Film Festival / CineAutopsiaBogotà
Colombia
August 18, 2023
Official Selection
Marina Sagona (b. 1967) is an Italian and American multimedia conceptual artist. Her upcoming exhibition Stabat Mater at Chiquita Room Gallery will take place within the frame of the Loop Festival in Barcelona in November 2023. Sagona has diverse experiences in the arts. Early in her career, she studied Art History at the University La Sapienza in Rome and was the postmodern artist Mario Schifano’s studio assistant. After arriving in New York in 1995, she illustrated for The New Yorker and the New York Times. From 2006 to 2008, she directed the Contemporary Department of the Foundation for Italian Art and Culture (FIAC). Her curatorial practice includes a collaboration with Alanna Heiss on the exhibition “Senso Unico” at MoMA PS1 in 2008 and the exhibition “Dante Ferretti: Design and Construction for the Cinema” at MoMA in 2014. Sagona is also the recipient of the 2019 Domus Artist Residency in Galatina, Italy, and the 2021 Chiquita Gallery Residency in Barcelona, Spain. Stabat Mater won the Cadence Video Poetry Festival award in the category of Video Poetry by an Artist, the Best Script/Concept Award at Ribalta Experimental Film Festival and Best Experimental Film Award at Sipontum Arthouse International Film festival.
In 2006, when my portrait was painted, my marriage was about to come to an end.
The artist Bernardo Siciliano, my former husband, portrayed a suffering image of me and in that regard the painting really is a powerful testimony of my biographical circumstances of the time.
For many years it has been for me quite difficult to look at that painting.
At the time Bernardo and I were finally getting over a long and very difficult period, due to our daughter’s illness, period in which our marriage was severely damaged.
This portrait represents for me a dual pain, the pain of a woman who has been abandoned and the pain of a mother who is standing at the cross of her child.
The eighteen seconds footage of the film was shot by me with a Leica D-Lux that was gifted to my husband by his godfather, film director Bernardo Bertolucci.