Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface: The Poly-Expressive Symphony of Futurist Cinema
- Section 1 Joyful Deformation Of The Universe
- 1 Introduction: The Poetics of Futurist Cinema
- 2 Speed and Dynamism: Futurism and the Soviet Cinematographic Avant-garde
- 3 Futurism and Film Theories: Manifesto of Futurist Cinema and Theories in Italy in the 1910-1920s
- 4 Film Aesthetics Without Films
- 5 Marinetti’s Tattilismo Revisited: Hand Travels, Tactile Screens, and Touch Cinema in the 21st Century
- 6 Dance and Futurism in Italian Silent Cinema
- 7 Futurism and cinema in the 1910s: A Reinterpretation Starting from McLuhan
- 8 The Human in the Fetish of the Human: Cuteness in Futurist Cinema, Literature, and Visual Arts
- Section 2 Daily Filmed Exercises Designed To Free Us From Logic
- 9 Yambo on the moon of Verne and Méliès: From La Colonia Lunare to UN MATRIMONIO INTERPLANETARIO
- 10 An Avant-Garde Heritage: VITA FUTURISTA
- 11 Thaïs: A Different Challenge to the Stars
- 12 VELOCITÀ, a Screenplay by F.T. Marinetti: From Futurist Simultaneity to Live Streaming Media
- 13 Velocità/Vitesse: Filmed Dramas of Objects and ‘avant-garde integrale’
- 14 From Science to the Marvellous: The Illusion of Movement, Between Chronophotography and Contemporary Cinema
- Section 3 Shop Windows Of Filmed Ideas, Events, Types, Objects
- Chronology: Fernando Maramai
- Filmography
- Index
- Film Culture in Transition
10 - An Avant-Garde Heritage: VITA FUTURISTA
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface: The Poly-Expressive Symphony of Futurist Cinema
- Section 1 Joyful Deformation Of The Universe
- 1 Introduction: The Poetics of Futurist Cinema
- 2 Speed and Dynamism: Futurism and the Soviet Cinematographic Avant-garde
- 3 Futurism and Film Theories: Manifesto of Futurist Cinema and Theories in Italy in the 1910-1920s
- 4 Film Aesthetics Without Films
- 5 Marinetti’s Tattilismo Revisited: Hand Travels, Tactile Screens, and Touch Cinema in the 21st Century
- 6 Dance and Futurism in Italian Silent Cinema
- 7 Futurism and cinema in the 1910s: A Reinterpretation Starting from McLuhan
- 8 The Human in the Fetish of the Human: Cuteness in Futurist Cinema, Literature, and Visual Arts
- Section 2 Daily Filmed Exercises Designed To Free Us From Logic
- 9 Yambo on the moon of Verne and Méliès: From La Colonia Lunare to UN MATRIMONIO INTERPLANETARIO
- 10 An Avant-Garde Heritage: VITA FUTURISTA
- 11 Thaïs: A Different Challenge to the Stars
- 12 VELOCITÀ, a Screenplay by F.T. Marinetti: From Futurist Simultaneity to Live Streaming Media
- 13 Velocità/Vitesse: Filmed Dramas of Objects and ‘avant-garde integrale’
- 14 From Science to the Marvellous: The Illusion of Movement, Between Chronophotography and Contemporary Cinema
- Section 3 Shop Windows Of Filmed Ideas, Events, Types, Objects
- Chronology: Fernando Maramai
- Filmography
- Index
- Film Culture in Transition
Summary
Abstract
The most important movie produced by Italian Futurists was certainly the performance film VITA FUTURISTA (Futurist Life). All known copies have been officially declared lost. Different studies about the testimonials of the film's late audience, the division of the sequences, the further integrations to the original plot, the public screenings, the written sources, and the popular imagery have allowed us to become familiar with and to understand one of the first avant-garde experiences in cinema. All these studies have been made without ever having seen the film: the only sources are archival materials, documents, papers, and critical testimony from the past.
This essay aims to reconstruct the history of this pivotal lost film by quoting diversified sources; through such sources (which include the so-called ‘non-filmic’ elements, such as public indexes, personal letters, press reviews, memorials, posters, etc.), VITA FUTURISTA can be studied philologically.
Keywords: Vita Futurista, Marinetti, Ginna, Film Philology
The first Futurist film was shot in the summer of 1916. ‘Cinematographic translation of the serial (para-tactical) formula of variety theatre or of synthetic theatre’ (Strauven 2006: 162), VITA FUTURISTA was a collective work in which each one of the participating Futurists contributed, although Arnaldo Ginna received the most credit for directing. Arnaldo and Bruno Ginanni Corradini, also known as Arnaldo Ginna (in association with the Italian word ‘ginnastica’, gymnastic) and Bruno Corra (from the Italian ‘correre’, to run) respectively, were two aristocratic brothers from Ravenna, as well as eclectic artists, representatives of the heterodox area of Futurism, and aestheticians close to Cerebrist matrix. In the first decade of the 20th century, their experimental research and their theoretical writings, Musica romatica (Chromatic Music) and Arte dell’avvenire (Art of the Future), explored the expressive possibilities of the new medium in the dynamic relationship between music and colours. The 1912 essay by Bruno Corra, Musica cromatica, furnishes evidence for the experience of the ‘music of colours’, obtained through an organ of 28 keys, each of which was connected to a corresponding coloured light bulb (Corra 1912: 246); the brothers’ experiment anticipated their decision to paint colours on film (Corra 1912: 247-251).
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- Futurist CinemaStudies on Italian Avant-garde Film, pp. 147 - 162Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2017