Yervant Gianikian, Angela Ricci Lucchi - Prigionieri della guerra (1995)
This film is a masterpiece, one the greatest experimental film of the last decade. It’s a found footage film against the war, every war.
The film consists of material shot during the 1914- 1918 World War, collected into the archives of the great Empires involved in the clash, and mainly the Tsarist and Austro-Hungarian ones. The work consists of the contrast between the military “report films” concerning the conditions of the war prisoners, of the orphans, of the refugees, of women and children and of the fallen of both sides; mirrorimage events shot by “enemy” cameras on the edges of battles. The story also follows the movements and dispersions of different ethnic groups that operated on the various fronts and that after defeat underwent deportation to places distant from their motherlands.
Yervant Gianikian (born to Armenian parents) studied architecture in Venice; Angela Ricci-Lucchi studied painting in Austria with Oskar Kokoschka. Setting in Milan, they have devoted their activities to the cinema since the mid-seventies, first with their performance screening of scened films, then with their artisanal re-working of the old films of their collection which they tinted, toned and re-edited - as they did, for example, in From the Pole to the Equator (Dal polo all'equatore) with footage shot by pioneer Luca Comerio. Working like archeologists with filmstock, ideologies and culture, they have developed a cinema which is not only narrative and poetry but also critique and analysis of the recycled footage.
Film with no words (You don’t need any subs) but with an incredible soundtrack made using letters and diaries of prisoners of the first world war.
Prigionieri della guerra (Gianikian - Ricci Lucchi 1996 - XviD).CiNEMAGROTESQUE.avi
Coming from my collection but ripped and shared by 3p and cinemagrotesque group!
