Piazzale degli Uffizi will be the new fascinating Florentine location that will frame the eighth edition of Midsummer Nights, the main summer event of the Specchio dell'arte Film Festival, which in 2017 celebrates 10 years of activity.
For four Mondays, 26 June, 3, 10 and 17 July, a selection of films dedicated to three protagonists of contemporary art will be presented, Bill Viola, JR, Thomas Hirschhorn, and to the street art festival FAME which from 2008 to 2012 involved the likes of Blu, Momo, Ericailcane and Conor Harrington.
The initiative is one of the events of the Estate Fiorentina 2017 and is part of the film festival "Apriti Cinema" organized by those of the Company of FST - Fondazione Sistema Toscana for the Municipality of Florence.
First appointment on Monday 26 June with Fame, introduced by the authors, the director and screenwriter Giacomo Abruzzese and Angelo Milano, creator of the Grottaglie Street Art Festival "FAME". The film tells the homonymous self-financed project born in 2008 which, until 2012, invaded the small and quiet Apulian town of Grottaglie with the works and graffiti of internationally renowned street artists, including Blu, Momo, Ericailcane, Conor Harrington, Escif, Vhils.
The film will be presented in the Biografilm Art section of Biografilm Festival – International Celebration of Lives 2017 and will be distributed theatrically by I Wonder Pictures.
On Monday 3 July, Angelo Ludin's film Thomas Hirschhorn – Gramsci Monument, presented in Italian preview during the Lo Specchio dell'Arte Film Festival 2015. It tells the story of the creation of the site-specific monument, a tribute to one of the most important philosophers of the 2013th century, who l he Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn created in the summer of XNUMX in the Bronx in New York, living for five months with the inhabitants of the neighborhood, dealing with different ethnic groups and cultures, to build a place to host art and politics workshops, a library and spaces for children .
Bill Viola: The Road to St. Paul's will be presented on Monday 10 July in the presence of director Gerald Fox, in collaboration with the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation, on the occasion of the Bill Viola exhibition. Electronic Renaissance underway at Palazzo Strozzi until 23 July. The film is a new biography of the master of contemporary video art, which portrays him during the creation of the two permanent installations Martyrs (2014) and Mary (2016) for St. Paul's Cathedral in London and which, with backstage shots, images of repertoire, interviews with the artist, his wife and collaborator Kira and many personalities from the art world, offers an intimate portrait of Viola's professional and private life, deeply linked to the spiritual themes that form the basis of her works, ranging from Christian culture to Buddhist thought, up to Islamic Sufism.
The review concludes on Monday 17 July with Women Are Heroes by the French artist JR – winner together with director Agnès Varda with Visages, Villages de L'Oeil D'Or for best documentary at the last Cannes Film Festival. It is the story of her project started in 2007 with which she portrayed on huge posters posted around the world the faces of women she met in Kenya, Brazil, India and Cambodia, forced to live in extreme poverty and struggle daily with courage and dignity. between civil wars and violence. A film that has become a message of hope, with a soundtrack by Massive Attack and Patrice Bart Williams.
All films are in the original version and subtitled in Italian. Admission to the screenings is free, subject to availability. Screenings start at 22.00.
