Do-it-yourself. Do it yourself! Do it! Do it for yourself! Àngoli – Festival Internazionale d’Arte presents SAVE ME FROM TEARS curated by duo Francesco Urbano Ragazzi (our esteemed AEROPONIC ACTS respondents 2023). Tracing a subtle yet profound continuity across generations and historical, geographical, and social contexts, SAVE ME FROM TEARS highlights artist filmmakers advocating for a do-it-yourself cinema. “Like the filmmakers of the New American Cinema, Cheryl Donegan, CHEAP Collective, Annette Frick, Akram Zaatari, Tamara Henderson, P. Staff, and Invernomuto [...] spare themselves and the audience the pathos of complacent representations, choosing instead to inhabit screens, theaters, and bodies as spaces of desire and transformation.” From December 27 to 29, 2024, @Spazio Murat, Bari.
USER MANUAL
Do-it-yourself. Do it yourself! Do it! Do it for yourself! Do it with yourself! Just do it. Do yourself. Be yourself. Find yourself. Remember who you are. Remember to do it yourself. Do what you want. Do as you please. Do alone. Do with nothing. Do as it comes. Do with what you find. Do with everything. Do with what you love. Do with whom you love. Do it again.
Spazio Murat continues its multidisciplinary research and promotional activities in Bari by presenting the second edition of Àngoli – International Art Festival from December 27 to 29, 2024, hosted in the majestic Kursaal Santalucia theater. The festival invites audiences to repopulate the cinematic space with the sights and sounds of artist cinema. It does so with SAVE ME FROM TEARS, a Christmas-themed program dedicated to fluidity and bodily fluids, curated by Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, a duo renowned for their long-time exploration of the intersection between independent cinema, visual arts, and digital media.
Two films that made the history of cinema serve as guiding lights for the program, embodying the spirit of a flaming Christmas: Fireworks (1947) by Kenneth Anger and Christmas on Earth (1963) by Barbara Rubin. These works subvert traditional imagery, unleashing on-screen the overwhelming and liberating power of sexual desire.
Notable guests of the program include New York artist Cheryl Donegan, a pioneer of post-digital feminist cinema and painting since the early 1990s; two pillars of Berlin’s trans-identitarian art scene, Annette Frick and CHEAP Collective; and the Italian artist duo Invernomuto, known for pushing anthropological research into territories of sonic and multimedia experimentation.
Alongside the works of Donegan, CHEAP, Frick, and Invernomuto, three contemporary masterpieces will be shown in Bari for the first time: Dance to the End of Love by Lebanese archival artist and filmmaker Akram Zaatari, Green in the Grooves by Canadian sculptor and filmmaker Tamara Henderson, and On Venus by British artist and director P. Staff. Originating from vastly different geographical and cultural contexts, these works share a common thread: the ability to bring to light underground rituals and forms of life that, navigating the political, the ecological, and the fantastical, redefine human matter and transcend it.
For the full festival program: www.spaziomurat.it
About Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, esteemed respondents during AEROPONIC ACTS 2023 ~ WHERE THE MOON IS UP