Now in its sixth edition, this year's Floating Cinema ~ Unknown Waters changes body of water, mooring in front of the island of Sacca Fisola, where the public is invited to venture into the lagoon and create an amphibious settlement. Since its earliest editions, the festival has presented experiments with sound and moving images, blending cinema and the visual arts. The program includes pre-cinematic techniques such as shadow theater and magic lanterns, silent films with live soundtracks, film projections, and digital technologies.
The sixth edition of Cinema Galleggiante ~ Acque Sconosciute is made possible thanks to the support of the partners
Such as: TBA21–Academy/Ocean Space (2020–2025), Pentagram Foundation (2020–2025), Palazzo Grassi – Punta della Dogana – Pinault Collection (2020–2025), In Between Art Film Foundation (2021–2025), Peggy Guggenheim Collection (2022–2025), Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève (2025), Espace Louis Vuitton Venice (2025). Additional support is provided by the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici; Fondazione Venezia, Palazzetto Bru Zane – Centre de musique romantique française, The KHR McNeely Family Fund Kevin, Rosemary and Hannah Rose McNeely.
The authors presented in the sixth edition of Cinema Galleggiante ~ Acque Sconosciute
Kamal Aljafari, Ila Bêka, Cathy Berberian, Gavin Bryars, Kenshiro Caravaggio Carena, Simone Carraro, Corrado Chiatti, Jérôme Clément-Wilz, Pia Covre, Clément Cogitore, Sveva Conte, Gabriele Dal Santo, Jacqui Davies, Michela de Mattei and Invernomuto, Fabio De Meo, Lino Del Fra, Segundo de Chomón and Gaston Velle, Simona Denicolai and Ivo Provoost, Mati Diop and Manon Lutanie, Marcel Duchamp, Andro Eradze, Chiara Faggionato, Benedetta Fioravanti, Formafantasma and Joanna Piotrowska, Francesco Fonassi and Marta Salogni, Fossick Project, Hollis Frampton, Catriona Gallagher, Nathan Ghali, Sam Green, Ocarina of the Delta, Werner Herzog, Tony Hill, Gerard Holthuis, Nadia Huggins, Jorge Jácome, Malcolm Le Grice, Lawrence Lek, Diego Marcon, Gigi Masin, Giulia Claudia Massacci, Claron McFadden, Georges Méliès, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Kaldi Moss, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, Matteo Nasini, Luigi Nono, Quartetto Obliquo, Fabio Pedroli, Miranda Pennell, Camilla Pietrabissa, Sofia Pozdniakova, Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, Caroline Rambaud, Silvia Regazzo, Luisa Ronchini, Giacomo Salis, Stanley Schtinter, Wael Shawky, Emilija Škarnulytė, Valeria Sturba, Gaia Szames, Gabriele Tai, Talpah, Keneth Tam, Franciszka and Stefan Themerson, Daniele Tucci, Florin Tudor and Mona Vatamanu, Emmanuel van der Auwera, Jean Vigo, Franziska Von Stenglin, Emanuele Wiltsch Barberio, Anna Wittenberg, Paolo Zavagna, Liga Zirina. TBA21–Academy/Ocean Space presents four productions by artists Nadia Huggins, Kaldi Moss Kenneth Tam, and Emilija Škarnulytė that explore and question the boundaries and limits of fixed, binary models. A common thread among the works is the use of freestyle as an ongoing action and a strategy for rewriting. Pentagram Stiftung, in the year of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement awarded to Werner Herzog, presents one of the German director's most daring filmic undertakings: La Soufrière (1977), which documents the warnings of an impending volcanic eruption on the island of Guadeloupe following the evacuation of its inhabitants.
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection offers Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's silent film classic Nosferatu (1922), in its color version restored by the Cineteca di Bologna. The film features live scoring by Valeria Sturba, who experiments with voice, violin, theremin, electronics, and toys.
Palazzo Grassi – Punta della Dogana – Pinault Collection presents Cabaret Crusades: The Path to Cairo (2012), a film inspired by the book The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1983) by Amin Maalouf, the second episode of Wael Shawky's trilogy: the work covers the period between the First and Second Crusades through a story sung with sounds typical of the Bahraini musical tradition, performed by ceramic puppets.
In Between Art Film Foundation presents three works Flowering and fading (2024), by Andro Eradze, where the premonition of a presence, between natural and supernatural, hovers within a domestic space; Tactile Afferents (2023), by Formafantasma and Joanna Piotrowska, which investigates the sense of touch as a tool of communication between humans and other mammals, focusing on interspecies intimacies, between affection, violence and control; Marshall Allen, 99, Astronaut (2024), by Ari Benjamin Meyers, which celebrates the legendary leader of the Sun Ra Arkestra through the performance of two original scores performed in his home in Philadelphia.
The sixth edition sees the participation of the Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, Cinema Galleggiante ~ Acque Sconosciute is a new partner from 2025, presenting a program of four works, including three films commissioned and produced in 2024 for the Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement. These include Empty Rider (2024), by Lawrence Lek, which explores the complex issues of legal liability resulting from the actions of machines guided by artificial intelligence; The Gospel (2024), by Emmanuel van der Auwera, which analyzes the intersections between artificial intelligence, extractivism, and modern warfare; and La Gola (2024), by Diego Marcon, an intimate epistolary melodrama that recounts the lack of communication between two people, one immersed in the experience of pleasure and the other in pain. Parting Friends (2022), by Old Excellent, is a danse macabre painted in India ink on a roll of acetate, which is presented in its digital version for the occasion.
For its first participation as a partner, the Espace Louis Vuitton Venice – in parallel with the program dedicated to Clément Cogitore, with The Evil Eye – presents: Berlin Horse (1970), the first 16mm color film by Malcolm Le Grice, today considered a cornerstone of British experimental cinema; The resonant interval (2016), by Clément Cogitore, which takes inspiration from two inexplicable physical phenomena: the alleged sound produced by the aurora borealis and the appearance of a mysterious light formation in Alaska. Here, in both cases, scientific hopes collide with the superstitions and beliefs of the Inuit and Sámi cultures,
Finally, in preview, I used a nude girl (2022), by the young author Caroline Rambaud, gives voice to Marli Renfro, Janet Leigh's stunt double in the famous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.
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Cover photo: credits Roberto Banfi Photographer
