MASBEDO will present the world premiere of Welcome Palermo on the occasion of Lo Schermo dell’Arte Film Festival, Florence. The feature film spans the formal and narrative development of the Videomobile project, the coherent multi-channel video installation conceived for Manifesta 12 Palermo.
Welcome Palermo takes its title from a random street mural that greets anyone who arrives in the city from the airport. It embodies a dystopian welcome message that sets the city itself as the protagonist, and not just as a simple landscape. The journey of the Videomobile is the core of the 80-minute feature film. The artist duo transformed an old OM van of the 1970s into a “video wagon” as a experimentation to patrol and investigate the Sicilian territory and its artist’s cinema.
Thanks to a particular suggestion by the curatorial team of Manifesta 12, the research began in 2018 and attributed the involvement of several leading figures in the iconic cinema scene, such as Vittorio De Seta, Ugo Gregoretti, Luchino Visconti, whilst investigating other professionals that worked in cinema in an almost anonymous and unconventional manner.
Welcome Palermo is not only a collective research of materials for the project of Manifesta 12, but an extensive buildout of the research process carried out continually by the artists after the biennial. The “video wagon” has altered the stage for new performances, interactions and interviews, bringing in personages such as the mayor of Palermo Leoluca Orlando, Princess Vittoria Alliata of Villafranca and Valguarnera, and the Tamil community residing in the city.
The Videomobile of MASBEDO completes a physical journey through the archives and memory of the Sicilian experimental cinema and becomes the means by which memory acquires form and meaning in contemporary society.