Piero Bargellini was born in Arezzo in 1940. An agronomist, film lover and amateur filmmaker, he joined
the “Cinema Indipendente” Cooperative in 1968 and became one of the most important figures of Italian
underground cinema. His films are intensely poetic and reflect artisanal wisdom, based on his scientific
knowledge of optics and chemistry. He made films like Morte all'orecchio di Van Gogh, Fractions of
Temporary Periods, Trasferimento di modulazione, Gasoline, Stricnina, between 1966 and 1973, in a total
identity of art and life. These works tell “the history, in its own way exemplary, of one of the secret
protagonists, and of the famous victims, of the revolution of 1968.”
Ideally conceived as a dialectic interface between the Italian Competition and Detours, this tribute
(curated by Fulvio Baglivi with the help of Adriano Aprà) is also the way we have chosen to remember
Marco Melani on the tenth anniversary of his death. Marco, who was a friend and collaborator of
Bargellini’s, and who continues to be our inspiration and a "hidden" prompter, organized for the first
festival in Torino (1982) a commemoration of his friend, who had recently passed away. His intent was to
remove the label of “experimental”: “his cinema was cinema tout court, like that of Rossellini, Hawks,
Bertolucci, Schifano, Brakhage and all the other filmmakers he loved.”