Magic Lantern Film Festival is a semiannual research-based thematic investigation of the interstice between visual art and cinema. The festival aspires to act both as a tool for the dissemination of artistic languages that use film as a medium with which to give form to the imagination and as a moment of critical inquiry of authors, ideas and genres.

Magic Lantern Film Festival launches its programming with Phantasmagoria, a small collection of films that demonstrate how noir and horror have been adopted and adapted by the visual arts, creating narratives imbued with current socio-political implications. The films’ protagonists move in a context characterized by uncertainty, in a perpetually misleading, sometimes desperate and corrupt, world where tension and fear – laced by dark humor – prevail.

The festival will take place 26-28 October 2016 at the American Academy in Rome, Real Academia de España in Rome and Germany Academy Rome Villa Massimo.

The project is conceived and curated by Maria Alicata, Adrienne Drake and Ilaria Gianni.

FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Wednesday 26 October at 6:00pm
American Academy in Rome
Via Angelo Masina, 5

Theatrical trailer for Hiker Meat
by Jesus Rinzoli, Italy, 1982, 1’ 52’’

A real trailer for a fictional film, Hiker Meat explores the tension between fact and fiction in the narratives we use to define our identities and share our stories. A new type of storytelling is proposed, which includes unreliable narration, multiple realities and meta-commentary.

Office Killer
by Cindy Sherman, USA, 1997, 82’
Miramax/Park Circus

When Dorine Douglas' job at Constant Consumer Magazine is turned into an at-home position during a downsizing, she doesn't know how to cope, but after accidentally killing one of her co-workers, she discovers that murder can quench the loneliness of her home life, as a macabre office place forms in her basement, populated by dead co-workers.

Thursday 27 October at 6:00pm
Real Academia de España in Rome
Piazza di S. Pietro in Montorio, 3

Theatrical trailer for Sculpt
by Loris Greaud, USA, 2016, 2’ 28’’

Sculpt follows the thoughts of a man whom we don’t know much about; he seems to be constantly developing the very concept of what experiencing beauty, thought, or obsession can be, despite the risks that the subjects are exposed to in the long term.

The Point of Least Resistance
by Fischli & Weiss, Switzerland, 1980-81, 30’
Copyright: Peter Fischli David Weiss Zürich / Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London; Matthew Marks Gallery New York and Los Angeles; Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich

Set against a noir-style Los Angeles background, two artists in rat and bear costumes become embroiled in a murder mystery that raises questions and observations on the nature of art and crime before spiralling into sublime flights of fancy.

The Right Way
by Fischli & Weiss, Switzerland, 1983, 55’
Copyright: Peter Fischli David Weiss Zürich / Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London; Matthew Marks Gallery New York and Los Angeles; Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich

Friendship is once again put to the test as rat and bear go hiking in the open, unspoiled countryside, at the mercy of the elements and all kinds of miracles - and, above all, at the mercy of themselves.

Friday 28 October at 7:00pm
Germany Academy Rome Villa Massimo
Largo di Villa Massimo, 1-2

Theatrical trailer for Remainder
by Omer Fast, UK/Germany, 2015, 1’ 50’’
A London man who loses his memory when he's struck by a falling object develops a way to reconstruct his past. His obsessive efforts are funded by a large financial settlement for an accident he cannot remember.

Dracula’s Ghost
by Katrin Sonntag, Germany, 2009, 21’ 22’’ min
Courtesy Kadel Willborn, Dusseldorf and the artist

Dracula’s Ghost describes the bizarre mutations of meaning undergone by the Dracula myth in Romania, and explains how the vampire Dracula was actually an imported concept, appearing in Romania only after the opening of the borders for tourism in the 1960s. Alongside an interplay of documentary and fiction, facts and seduction, further readings of the Dracula phenomenon are revealed.

Storie di fantasmi per adulti
by Diego Marcon, Italy, 2010, 16' 22''
Courtesy of the artist

The protagonist of this film is the house of a hunter-watchmaker: full of objects, though silent and devoid of human presence. Composed of a sequence of still images of paintings, photographs, small sculptures, trinkets, Storie di fantasmi per adulti activates the gaze and imagination of the viewer on what would appear to be a series of still lifes, giving rise to new narrations, awakening the most hidden and mysterious dimension of the house, and revealing the true – and surprising – nature of the objects.

For additional information:
see program in attachment
magiclanternfilmfestival.wordpress.com