Do you feel similar to Romeo? He tries to aesthetize the terrible too.

We both come from the same region, “Romagna felix”, which has generated artists for decades, if not forever. We certainly share something, but our aesthetics are independent. Today what is beautiful is frightening, while what is ugly is reassuring. The concept of beauty continues to change. I could say that we’re both capable of conceiving a frightening beauty.

Let’s come back to you. How is your tour going?

There will be two dates at the MoMA. In addition to Atlantide, there will be a retrospective of my shorts in April. Then I’ll go to Los Angeles for a screening at the Hammer Museum. Festivals and museums are finally opening again, but the situation has remained dire. Violence reigns everywhere, wherever you go.

Here’s an awfully obvious question, but one that is always appropriate when approaching your work. Your works travel along the double track of documentary and video art. Do you agree?

I expected this question and I realize that it’s become almost ritual, a recurring motif around my cinema. If we want to simply matters: yes, I agree. But let’s talk about moving images. Images are impalpable: they exist and move everywhere, without fear of crossing boundaries. My work is like that: a fluid that cannot be contained, which can be cinema but also memory, such as the documentation of one of Castellucci’s works, for example.

What future do you see for cinema like yours?

The cinema is a vast context and within it there is a war going on between those who only want to make entertainment out of it and their arthouse counterparts. I feel safe inside museums: eternal places, whose storerooms ensure a long life for art.

Have you been to the cinema recently? Talking about the mainstream, for example, what do you think of the much-debated question on the status of cinecomics? 

I’m interested in the cinema and I go. What I’m not interested in is entertainment. Control over the masses is also exercised through entertainment today. Entertainment repels me in every form: I want to have experiences, not be entertained. This is why I go to festivals, where I see lots of interesting works that will probably never be distributed.

You feel safer in museums, but cinemas have probably just gone through the worst period in their history. Do you fear that something has inevitably changed?

When I started my studies, in the 1990s, they already told me that video art was dead, that there was nothing left to say with video. Instead of discouraging me, this inspired me to find my own path. Every now and then someone comes out and says that it’s not “like it used to be”. But the reality is that it’s never “like it used to be”. It was during the pandemic that I started my first real distribution experience. It was an opportunity for me: while the industry was withdrawing its films from cinemas for economic reasons, I found myself in the position of being able to show Atlantide much more than originally planned. A film that should have been released as a three-day event can still be found in some theatres.

Last week Atlantide arrived on VOD on Amazon Prime Video, on the I Wonder channel.

A film about violence needs to be seen as much as possible. The streaming of Atlantide is going really well and the distributor is very happy. Apparently it’s doing better than some French comedies [silence, then he starts laughing]. If he’s happy, then so am I. It’s currently only possible to watch it on demand in Italy. An opportunity to study it or for those who don’t live near a cinema that showed it. Everyone knows it’s a different experience watching a film at the cinema. Just think of the fact that there are twenty speakers and a subwoofer in the room. It’s the same difference between dancing at home, with your phone connected to a speaker, or being in a club or at a rave.