Shipwreck…

… is an issue I’ve been thinking about during these first days in Izola. Mainly because, after having seen a couple of movies, I kept wondering why before every projection they show on screen a frame displaying the text of Giacomo Leopardi’s L’infinito (that in the English translation ends precisely with “So that in this immensity / my thoughts are drowned, and shipwreck / seems sweet to me in this sea”). The link between Kino Otok and the most famous poem by the hunchback from Recanati seemed quite inexplicable to me… Insomuch as I ended up thinking that those lines were possibly meant to express the hope that the moviegoers sailing the Northern Adriatic could be shipwrecked on the Izola seaside (maybe to be hunt by the staff, like in The most dangerous game… Ok, I’m digressing).

Actually the truth proved to be (just a little) more prosaic, as I got told by Sanja that it’s only a part of Vlado Škafar’s project to get rid of cinema and replace it with poetry by presenting examples of this kind of art in the most unthinkable places and forms (obviously Vlado, as a performer, belongs to the school of thought named “hiddenism”, according to which the pleasure given by the mere enjoyment of the art works should be doubled by that given by the surprise of finding them where you least expect’em… Ok, I’m digressing again).

The second reason why this word has come to my mind is connected with Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno, the documentary by Serge Bromberg & Ruxandra Medrea I saw in the afternoon. As it tells the story of the 1964 overambitious project by French master that got exactly shipwrecked, it could seem somehow appropriate that the movie’s test screening on Tuesday evening got shipwrecked too (due to some technical problem). Anyway, the Odeon screening went without any problem, so we got the chance to imagine the visual masterpiece L’enfer would have been if only the captain had succeeded in leading the ship safely to the port…


Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno (L’enfer de Henri-Georges Clouzot), Serge Bromberg & Ruxandra Medrea, France 2009
riyl:
Hell (L’enfer), Claude Chabrol, France 1994 (you’d never thought about it, uh?)

PIERVI