Romanelli’s ‘Venezia Altrove’ premiered in Rotterdam
Elia Romanelli’s Imagined Venice opens the Rotterdam Architecture Film Festival 2021
The Rotterdam Architecture Film Festival has chosen Italian ‘Venice Elsewhere’‘as the opening film for its 2021 edition, dedicated this year to the theme’More than houses “.
Last film by the director and anthropologist Elia Romanelli, ‘Venice Elsewhere‘, produced by DocArt and distributed by Taskovski Film, will have its international premiere on Wednesday 6 October at the Theater Zuidplein in Rotterdam.
Within the Festival, where art and architecture dialogue to create an open debate on contemporary issues of everyday life, Romanelli brings an eclectic reflection on the nature of a city. As Venice sinks under the weight of mass tourism and exceptional high waters, the director has traveled to Europe in search of remote places that take the name of Venice.
Places whose inhabitants have a silent desire to one day visit the lagoon city they have never seen. In the style of ‘The Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, Romanelli asks the question: how does a city live in our imagination?
With refined images and stories selected over a four-year period, ‘Venice Elsewhere‘opens a dialogue with the viewer on the cultural impact of a place, on the power of the imagination and on the tragedy of loss. For a city as a metaphor for life and a dream as a last escape in an increasingly globalized world.
Director comments:
The implicit risk of becoming an icon city is the emptying of the meaning of those who are awarded the symbol of a territory. I
The journey of this film is meant to be an iconoclastic possibility, seeking to redesign Venice apart from Piazza San Marco, the Rialto Bridge and the black gondola that glides through the green canals.
Specialized in art documentaries, Romanelli also takes part in the Film & Architecture Studio, open lessons for students from all over the world organized within AFFR and coordinated by the architect and director Jord de Hollander, in which he will deal with the themes of the film and his previous works, in particular his work on the architect Tobia Scarpa.