La Città Sul Retro (The City Tucked Away)
2020 · 10m · Italy
Directed by Marameo
Genres: documentary, essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
Beneath sleeping Bologna, the night workers and night seekers go about their unsynchronized routines. The film treats the city as a quiet circulatory system, observing it as video-art portraiture rather than narrative.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
City symphonies are out of fashion, which is exactly why this one matters. Marameo points the camera at Bologna at 3 a.m. and lets the place do its own talking — refreshing in a landscape addicted to voiceover.
A nocturnal Bologna city symphony as gallery-grade video art — the Ruttmann lineage filtered through contemporary slow-cinema is precisely the tradition I want to see kept alive.
A nocturnal city symphony made as gallery-grade video art — no narration, no main character, just Bologna breathing. The Ruttmann lineage is earned by the form's discipline.