Monte Bettogli, Carrara: in the marble quarries men and machines dig the mountain. The Chief manages, coordinates and guides quarrymen and heavy-duty machines using a language consisting solely of gestures and signs.
Piattaforma Luna
by Yuri Ancarani (doc, Italy, 2011, 26')
Six divers specializing in deep-sea operations are involved in an offshore operation conducted on the Luna platform. For weeks, their lives unfold between the seafloor and the hyperbaric chamber.
Da Vinci
by Yuri Ancarani (doc, Italy, 2012, 25')
Department of robotic surgery. Using a joystick, a surgeon performs an entire operation controlling the arms of a robot.
Séance
by Yuri Ancarani (doc, Italy, 2014, 30')
“Séance”, a meeting, takes place between psychologist Albània Tomassini and architect Carlo Mollino, who died in 1973. Fulvio Ferrari, the host of Casa Mollino, serves a dinner for two guests, one visible and one invisible. Ancarani records and films the remarkable interview in which Mollino points out the meaning and intent of his enigmatic past life and the new route to perfection, only possible in other dimensions.
San Siro
by Yuri Ancarani (doc, Italy, 2016, 26')
Anatomy of a stadium. Cablers, porters, policemen, stewards, groundskeepers, TV technicians, and fans make up the backstage of soccer's relentless ritual, staging a hypnotic still life of rains and nighttime mists as we approach our destination on the bus of the champions.
Whipping Zombie
by Yuri Ancarani (doc, Italy, 2017, 30')
In a remote Haitian village a dance exists, where they play slaves and masters: it’s the whipping zombie ritual. On a inducing trance music played by rara bands, men whip each other and fight till they die and are reborn in an infinite cycle.
San Vittore
by Yuri Ancarani (doc, Italy/Switzerland, 2018, 12')
For the children of inmates, San Vittore prison is a castle inhabited by kings and queens. The searches and checks that precede each visit to their parents do not stop their imagination.
The Challenge
by Yuri Ancarani (doc, Italy/France, 2016, 70')
Falconry has a history that stretches back over 40 centuries. In the West it was a prevailing passion of the medieval aristocracy, but its prestige continues undiminished in contemporary Arab culture. Three years of observing this form of hunting in the field have made it possible to capture the spirit of a tradition that today allows its practitioners to keep a close rapport with the desert, despite their predominantly urban lifestyle. Our guide to how they cross that threshold is a falconer taking his birds to compete in a tournament in Qatar. The film recounts a strange kind of “desert weekend”, in which technological and anthropological microcosms hang in the air, like the falcon, drifting on the irreversible currents of images.
Atlantide
by Yuri Ancarani (doc, Italy/France/USA/Qatar, 2021, 104')
Daniele is a young man from Sant’Erasmo, an island on the Venice Lagoon. He lives on his wits, even isolated from his peer group who are busy exploring a pleasure-seeking existence expressed in the cult of the barchino (motorboat). This obsession focuses on building ever more powerful engines to transform the little lagoon launches into dangerously fast racing boats. Daniele too dreams of a record-breaking barchino. We see the decline that erodes the relationships, environment and habits of a rootless generation from the timeless perspective of the Venetian landscape. The point of no return is a foolish tale of male initiation. Violent and bound to fail, it explodes dragging the ghost city along on a psychedelic shipwreck.
