Them Gardens

Between June 2021 and October 2022, artists from the associations Mirmica and Artisti a Progetto developed and carried out a series of artistic and social actions that converged in the project Siamo un giardino! The workshops allowed different categories of people, who suffered from immobility during the pandemic (students, the elderly, people with disabilities, but also ordinary citizens) to experience greater awareness with their bodies, expressiveness and dramaturgy. These activities were preparatory to a performance called Campi Sensibili that allowed participants to explore places, gardens, connected virtually by a digital medium. It is the encounter between the physical and virtual gardens that create an unprecedented safe space, able to accommodate different looks, different ways of moving, breathing, being.

  • Davor Marinković
    Director
  • Marco Fantacuzzi
    Producer
  • Cecilia Fincato
    Production manager
  • Davor Marinković
    Editing
  • Davor Marinković
    Camera operators
  • Marco Fantacuzzi
    Camera operators
  • Salvatore Toti Frisina
    Camera operators
  • Stefano Dallaporta
    Musical compositions and improvisation
  • Marco Fantacuzzi
    Post-production
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Altri Giardini
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Genres:
    Social, Art, Environment
  • Runtime:
    52 minutes 42 seconds
  • Country of Origin:
    Italy
  • Country of Filming:
    Italy
  • Language:
    Italian
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2,35:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Davor Marinković

Born in Serbia, he grew up in Vicenza, Italy. He graduated from the University of Padua with a thesis on Steve McQueen and Sean Bobbitt. Prior to Them Gardens, he directed five short films: Post Fata Resurgo (2012), Get off of my cloud (2014), Portrait (2015), There are shipwrecks even here (2017), Reznica (2022), his first documentary.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

The aesthetics of a work like this it arises while in the making. Begun as a documentation of a performative and social project, although it had valuable input at the outset, the film developed as it was made, tangling like a shrub, while in front of the camera people moved without an apparent destination, but guided by a common feeling that was formulated in a space parallel to the one in which the bodies existed. In this virtual space only the voice existed , everyone's voices, connected by a Zoom call. How then to channel so many different elements while managing to convey to the viewer the presence, the feeling of being there and exploring the Garden along with all the participants? The choice was not to untangle the foliage, not to prune the shrub, but to tuck the face in it. Often the camera's eye is like a peripheral observer, a gentle voyeur watching from the woods who is tending the garden. But slowly the gaze becomes closer, more participatory, never interfering, looking at everyone with equal dignity, operators and users.
In this garden, the Campi Sensibili performance, as if they were strawberry rhizomes, the montage inserted the workshops experience that accompanied the performance and gave the possibility to a varied humanity to work on different aspects of being together: the body, the voice, expressiveness, emotions, the creation of a story. This story is told as a walk in the garden of humanity, during which the COVID-19 pandemic was only a slight interference.