original title:
La discoteca
directed by:
cast:
Eva Robin's, Pietro Turano, Eugenia del Bue, Anna Amadori, Alex Paniz, Charlie Bianchetti, Kenjii Benjii
screenplay:
cinematography:
editing:
set design:
Andrea Tessarin
costume design:
music:
Thomas Costantin
production:
country:
Italy
year:
2021
film run:
25'
format:
DCP - colour
status:
Ready (10/09/2021)
festivals & awards:
In a dystopian future (2120), an unidentified authority exercises its power by forbidding people to give free rein to their emotions and to dance. The punishment is to be turned into roses. For Ermes – whose fiancé has recently been turned into a flower – and DIDI, this is a day unlike any other: they have been invited to the disco, where a man and a woman must meet to perform a rigorous ritual designed to further the reproduction of the species. The Babilonia, the name of the disco, is inhabited by Sylvster and her queer helpers, who lay out the rules to be followed. On the dancefloor, amid their own gestures and memories, Ermes and Didi will find the way to implement a surprising and alternative transformation.
DIRECTOR’S NOTES:
Over the course of my artistic career, La discoteca represents an evolution and a synthesis of my research into the themes of body language, identity construction, dance, community places and self-performativity. Coming to grips with the language of cinema for the first time, I found a guide in a range of cinematographic references, and I wanted to couple them with quotations from so-called “mainstream” culture, as both are part of my baggage of imagery. I also let myself be guided by the symbolism of flowers and by dreamlike and surreal visions, with the aim of proposing an open narrative in constant dialogue with the spectator. I wanted to tell of the disco not as a social venue, but as the intimate space of an experience that, albeit personal, always requires an element of sharing in order to exist. It is a journey into another dimension where night does not replace day but suspends it. In fact, you enter the disco to escape the harsh sunlight and begin a journey sectioned off into different rooms, as if they were the levels of a videogame or the corridors of a maze. It is not important where you arrive, but the transformation you undergo. While watching the film, I would like the spectators to lose control of the definitions that surround them and begin to dance, even if they simply close their eyes and imagine dancing “with whomever you want, however you want.”