Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Venice: Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi - Fashion in Film Il Manto e La Pelle – Inferno Unseen – Workshop Nanni Strada



Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi
Fashion in Film
On the occasion of the ten-year anniversary of the Fashion in Film Festival, London, the Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi presented a cycle of screenings open to the public and a workshop for students dedicated to exploring the relationship between fashion, cinema and art.
Above. Fashion designer Nanni Strada who conducted a workshop and presented  her film Il Manto e La Pelle.

 
Fashion Aperture
Fashion Designers and the Moving Image

Workshop
The three-day workshop Fashion Aperture - Fashion Designers and the Moving Image, investigated the relationships between fashion and new technologies and, in particular, the use of film by fashion designers as a tool for expression, planning and communication, from the beginning of the 20th century to today. 


 Caroline Evans, Alessandra Vaccari and Nanni Strada

The workshop was created and organized by Alessandra Vaccari, Iuav University of Venice, and Caroline Evans, Central Saint Martins College, University of the Arts London, with the participation of fashion designer Nanni Strada.

 
1970s Radical Fashion in Motion

Il Manto e La Pelle introduced by Nanni Strada
Italian fashion designer Nanni Strada has devoted her career to developing unconventional ways of thinking about clothing. In 1971 she designed the so-called abito abitabile (habitable dress) with no lining, no fixed size, adjustable fastenings and no reinforcements, kept together by ‘welding stitches’ (derived from knitwear). Searching for architectural purism in clothing, she has developed her research and design practice over a period of several decades, while also contributing to the theory and culture of fashion design with books such as Moda Design (Modo, 2000), and Lezioni. Moda Design e Cultura (Lupetti, 2013).


Photograph still from Il Manto e La Pelle – courtesy Nanni Strada Design Studio

 
 Il Manto e la Pelle - 1973 - Metaprogetto and Film
Nanni Strada with Clino T. Castelli
This workshop considered the key role that film played in making visible the radical anti-consumerist ideals of the 1970s Italian Design scene. Against this background, the workshop focused on Nanni Strada’s pioneering film Il Manto e la Pelle (The Mantle and the Skin) and provided a unique opportunity to meet the designer herself. Presented at the XV Milan Triennale (1973), the film explained and promoted her new system of ‘dressing design’: geometric, two-dimensional, compressible clothes assembled with futuristic stitching (the Mantle series) and tight tubular garments without seams – a seamless suit (the Skin series).

 

Nanni Strada - Pantysol – Tubular Dress without Seams


Nanni Strada – Torchon – Pleated Tubular Dress
Winner - Compasso D’Oro - 1976

  Still from The Inferno Unseen – courtesy MUBI

 Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi 
The Inferno Unseen (15)

with live electronic score by Rollo Smallcombe
Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi celebrated 10 years of the Fashion in Film Festival. Fashion in Film, MUBI and Lobster Films created a new cut of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1964 The Inferno. The Inferno Unseen resurfaces the original rushes of Clouzot’s unfinished feature, in a series of kinetic and optical experiments set against a newly-commissioned live electronic score by Rollo Smallcombe.




“The original rushes came like a pack of cards that had been very well shuffled. The music is 100% composed specifically for the new cut. That way it can really connect with the edit of the visuals. I wanted to create a soundscape that responded directly to the footage. I like to think that Clouzot’s original treatments and my electronic score feed off each other to offer a fresh take.”
Rollo Smallcombe
London based music producer, composer and filmmaker


Mubi’s Kiri Inglis – Palazzo Grassi’s Martina Malobbia – Fashion in Film director Marketa Uhlirova - Palazzo Grassi’s

Jacqueline Feldmann

   Still from The Inferno Unseen – courtesy MUBI

The Inferno Unseen – UK - 2017
The edit exclusively features film rushes for Henri-Georges Clouzot’s unfinished film Inferno (1964), left behind in 185 cans at the CNC Archive and re-discovered by Lobster Films in 2007. It is edited by Rollo Smallcombe and Marketa Uhlirova and features Serge Bromberg’s voice.  Clouzot’s cameramen Andreas Winding, Claude Renoir and Armand Thirard shot some twelve hours of film footage, showing abstract kinetic experiments and actors including Romy Schneider, Serge Reggiani, Dany Carrel and Jean-Claude Bercq captured in a number of wardrobe, screen and optical effects tests. The focus is primarily on Schneider performing simple, seductive actions in carefully composed mises-en-scene.

Actors
Romy Schneider, Serge Reggiani, Dany Carrel, Jean-Claude Bercq, Jacques Gamblin, Bernard Stora, Brigitte Bardot
Cinematography Andréas Winding - Armand Thirard  - Claude Renoir
Costumes - Jacques Fonteray


 
Mario Lupano


Sergio Gallozzi, Maria Grazia Rosin and Galliano Mariani

    Still from The Inferno Unseen – courtesy MUBI

The Inferno Unseen – UK - 2017

 

Mike, Jill and Jessica Smallcombe


 
Alexis Sornin


    Still from The Inferno Unseen – courtesy MUBI

 The Inferno Unseen – UK – 2017
Romy Schneider
Departing from Serge Bromberg’s critically acclaimed documentary about Clouzot’s film (2009), The Inferno Unseen focuses solely on the haunting and often beautifully colour-lit visions. Here the union between the filmic and the sartorial is made all the more striking by the unique temporality of a screen test performance.