(Bologna’s Modernissimo)

54 minutes, 2022
Director : Giuseppe SCHILLACI (France)
Production : Kolam Productions (France)

Through the story of the Modernissimo, an underground cinema built in 1914 in the bowels of Bologna and abandoned in the 2000’s, this documentary tells the history of Italian cinema in the style of an amateur film. Bologna’s official 20th century archives intertwine with the personal archives of a father speaking to his long-lost son. He dedicates this unpretentious film to him. Between his unrealised dreams both as a revolutionary and a film-maker, the father retraces a family history inhabited by ghosts, inviting his son to Bologna for the reopening of the Modernissimo, the mythical cinema which spanned his life.

Giuseppe SCHILLACI was born in Palermo and lives in Paris, where he works as a film director. After a master’s in Communication Sciences at Bologna’s University of Letters and Philosophy (master’s thesis with Umberto Eco), he worked in theatre and cinema as an executive producer, head of development and production assistant on several international films, including Wim Wenders’ The Palermo Shooting and John Turturro’s Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy. In 2019 he was selected as artist in residence for Matera European City of Culture to create a virtual reality film in collaboration with Euro-Mediterranean poets.

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