original title:
Mud
directed by:
screenplay:
cinematography:
editing:
Marco La Ferrara
set design:
Gianluca Palma, Sofia Orlando
music:
Andrea Napolitano
producer:
production:
Meclimone Produzioni Cinematografiche, with the support of MiC and SIAE
country:
Italy
year:
2024
film run:
15'
format:
colour
status:
Ready (25/10/2024)
genre:
animation film
festivals & awards:
Two hands gather mud from a puddle and begin to shape it. Are they the hands of a child, a primordial being, or a god? The hands manipulate the formless substance, creating increasingly complex figures. An entire city of clay is built. Yet the creative instinct remains strong, and the hands continue to shape, this time an anthropomorphic figure, a mud puppet. The clay-stained fingers trace marks similar to letters on the creature’s forehead, forming the word EMET, "life." The puppet, the Golem, opens its eyes. It comes to life, interacts with itself, with its environment, with its own reflection. Then, it too becomes contaminated by the desire for creation, by the urgency to shape. But creation and destruction feed each other. Mud does not flow away like water, it does not burn out like fire, it does not melt like snow. It endures. It clings to the skin, to objects, to floors, to ceilings, radically altering the territory it meets and the matter it comes into contact with. It does not disintegrate but imposes a mutation. Mud enters the eyes, altering one’s gaze. Even in its destructive capacity, it exercises a demiurgic power. The mud, embodied by the figure of the Golem, is deeply connected to the creative instinct, to the human need to shape, to give new form to reality, to modify the environment. It is likely the first non-organic material with which humans engaged in actively interacting with their surroundings. However, at the same time, mud holds immense destructive power, the ability to destroy entire cities. As we have recently experienced firsthand, during the recent floods in Romagna.