The Spectacular Now: The Films of Yuri Ancarani

Filmmaker and video artist Yuri Ancarani uncovers that which lies hidden underneath our mundane reality, offering ways for documentary films to explore things invisible to the human eye. Ancarani’s films push the envelope of documentary shot design. His meticulous visual language choices enable him to craft an incredibly rich mise-en-scène, adding a graceful flourish to the contents of each frame. His use of immersive multi-channel sound completes the experience, turning each film into a prolonged, hyper-aestheticized observation of human and machine behavior. The festival program features four of Ancarani’s films, all of which blur the line between documentary and contemporary art, revealing the spectacular beauty that can be found in the liminal spaces between a human body and a mechanical one. Straddling the thin line between documentary and fiction, his latest film, Atlantide, explores an underground boat racing scene led by passionate youth in the Venice Lagoon. In his short films, which will be screened in a masterclass held during the festival, Ancarani looks at procedures in the institutionalized spheres of medicine, sports, and police work, and asks how technology enables the automation of human activity, and how the human element expands and fine-tunes the work of unmanned devices. In each of his films, Ancarani challenges the viewers to gradually decipher what they are seeing, revealing the complete audiovisual puzzle piece by piece.

Moderated by Dr. Ohad Landesman

These events are part of our collaboration with the Italian Forum Cultural Center.