Private Project

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.

  • Marina Sagona
    Director
    Couscous
  • Marina Sagona
    Writer
    Couscous
  • Marina Sagona
    Producer
    Couscous
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    5 minutes 8 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    November 30, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    0 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    4:3
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Cadence Video Poetry Festival
    Seattle
    United States
    April 17, 2022
    USA Premiere
    Award Winner
  • London Rocks Film Festival
    London
    United Kingdom
    November 5, 2022
    UK premiere
    Official Selection
  • LA Independent Women Film Awards
    Los Angeles
    United States
    September 1, 2022
    Nominee
  • Art Film Awards
    Skopje
    Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of
    September 30, 2022
    Honorable mention
  • BIDEODROMO
    Bilbao
    Spain
    October 10, 2022
    Spain premiere
    Semi Finalist
  • Desenzano Film Festival
    Desenzano sul Grada (Brescia)
    Italy
    October 8, 2022
    Italian premiere
    Official selection
  • International Cosmopolitan Film Festival of Tokyo
    Tokyo
    Japan
    December 23, 2022
    Japan premiere
    Semi-Finalist
  • Rio de Janeiro World Film Festival
    Rio de Janeiro
    Brazil
    November 18, 2022
    South America premiere
    Semi-Finalist
  • Video Art and Experimental Film Festival
    New York
    United States
    October 14, 2022
    Honorable Mention
  • New York International Women Festival
    New York
    United States
    November 23, 2022
    Semi-Finalist
  • Dublin World Film Festival
    Dublin
    Ireland
    November 30, 2022
    Semi-Finalist
  • Philadelphia Arthouse Film Festival
    Philadelphia
    United States
    December 20, 2022
    Semi-Finalist
  • Blow-Up Arthouse Film Fest Chicago
    Chicago
    United States
    January 5, 2023
    Semi-finalist
  • Sunworld International Film Festival
    Sirkazhi
    India
    January 5, 2023
    India premiere
    Award Winner
  • Fisura International Festival of Experimental Film and Video
    Mexico City
    Mexico
    February 14, 2023
    Official selection
  • Ribalta Experimental Film Festival
    Vignola (MO)
    Italy
    March 18, 2023
    Best Script/Concept Award
  • Sipontum Arthouse International Film Festival
    Manfredonia
    Italy
    March 31, 2023
    Best Experimental, Film of the Season
  • Harlem International Film Festival
    New York
    United States
    May 20, 2023
    New York Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Bogotá Experimental Film Festival / CineAutopsia
    Bogotà
    Colombia
    August 18, 2023
    Official Selection
Director Biography - Marina Sagona

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.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

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.