A film review on the color white in contemporary Italian cinema.
A film series on the color white in contemporary Italian cinema
White in cinema is a color that is both fundamental and rarely explored, especially today. With the disappearance of snow, the accelerated pace of contemporary life, and the explosion of the color spectrum, fewer and fewer filmmakers take on the challenge posed by such an all-encompassing color. Through the gaze of various authors of contemporary Italian cinema, we explore the history of a color that becomes painterly matter in Giovanni Columbu’s splendid animated film Balentes, a tale of banditry set in the Sardinian lands that marks a new achievement for a filmmaker with a uniquely distinctive practice. White, instead, appears as a symbolic finale in Ephemeral Canon, a sonic catalogue of Italian oral tradition collected with dedication and love by the directing duo Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio, in a journey across Italy that also becomes a reconstruction of our collective memory. The two films will be presented in a Milan preview in the presence of the filmmakers. Completing the series is one of the fundamental films about the otherworldly dimension evoked by snow, presented thanks to the restoration by Cineteca di Milano: Time Stood Still, the first feature film by Ermanno Olmi.
The series was curated by Daniela Persico for Casa Testori’s “NEVEr alone” project, created thanks to the “Olympics of Culture” grant promoted by Regione Lombardia for the Milan–Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games and included in the Cultural Games calendar. “NEVEr alone” is a multidisciplinary project that rediscovers snow, starting from Giovanni Testori’s editorial Blessed Are You, Sister Snow, published on 17 January 1985 in Corriere della Sera on the occasion of the great, historic snowfall of those days. The editorial became the spark for two installations: on the ground floor of Casa Testori, a group exhibition of contemporary art curated by Giacomo Pigliapoco, complemented by two project rooms curated by Greta Martina and Rosita Ronzini, where artists engage with the symbolic and poetic meanings of snow; on the first floor, a focus on the 1985 snowfall, where Testori’s editorial enters into dialogue with the photographs taken by Mario De Biasi (1923–2013) during those snowy days. At Casa Testori, a group of about ten young filmmakers will reinterpret his photographs in a workshop led by Martina Parenti and Massimo D’Anolfi. On Saturday, 28 February 2026, the results of the workshop will be screened at Casa Testori as the final event of the series, serving as a public presentation of the participants’ work. Massimo D’Anolfi and Martina Parenti have been working together since 2007, the year they presented The Betrothed in Locarno, beginning a path marked by awards and international selections. With The Castle (2011) they reached major documentary festivals, earning important recognitions at Hot Docs, EIDF, and the IDA Awards. They were followed by Dark Matter (Berlinale 2013), The Never-Ending Factory of the Duomo (Locarno 2015), and Spira Mirabilis, in competition at Venice 73. Blue premiered at Venice 75, while War and Peace was presented in the Orizzonti section in 2020. More recent works include A Day in the Piero Bottoni Archive (Turin Film Festival 2022) and Bestiaries, Herbariums, Lapidaries (Venice 81, Best Direction Award at IDFA), along with A Document, presented at Filmmaker 2024.
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