Luce – The Italian imagination, Victor Emmanuel II Monument
1924-2014. Ninety years after the foundation of the Istituto Luce, the Vittoriano complex in Rome hosts the exhibition “Luce – The Italian imagination” from 4 July to 21 September 2014, to celebrate one of the largest cultural enterprises in the country, a place of election of his historical knowledge, and the material deposit of intangible assets: the memories, secrets, dreams of Italy from the early 1900s to the present. The Istituto Luce, a place of choice for its historical knowledge, and the material storage of memories, secrets, dreams of Italy in the twentieth century and beyond. A continuation, to accommodate the many further requests from the public as well as, with the resumption of teaching, numerous schools for their teachers and students.
The exhibition – conceived and created by Istituto Luce-Cinecittà, under the patronage of the President of the Republic, with the patronage of the Ministry of Goods and of and of the Lazio Region, and in collaboration with Roma Capitale in the context of the Roman Summer 2014 – is curated by Gabriele D’Autilia (scientific curator and texts) and by Roland Sejko (artistic curator and video direction). The general organization is to communicate by organizing.
Born in 1924 as LUCE, the Educational Cinematographic Union, with the intuition and intent to recount the actuality of the country, its society and the world through the still new language of moving images, and renamed with Royal Decree the following year, the Istituto Nazionale Luce was soon strongly supported and controlled by Benito Mussolini, who understood and exploited its enormous popular and political potential.
After 90 years and a story that has accompanied all the recent history of Italy in parallel and continuity, that intuition has now become the oldest public cinema institution in the world and, with an archive of tens of thousands of films and three million of photographs, an unparalleled patrimony of images in terms of quantity and richness of themes. So much so that in 2013 the entry for the fund “Newsreels and photographs of the Istituto Nazionale LUCE” in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register was deserved. An Italian good that has become a world good.
Not only the exhibition but also a volume, “Luce – The Italian imagination”, edited by Gabriele D’Autilia, professor of Photography and Cinema at the University of Teramo, with a preface by Dacia Maraini, edited by Rai Eri with Istituto Luce -Cinecittà. The book in 350 pages of texts (in Italian and English) and hundreds of black and white images, reflects the profound meaning of the exhibition: by browsing the photographs of the Luce Archive it is possible to read the different folds of Italy’s journey in the twentieth century.
Together with preserving and spreading the visual memory of Italians, Istituto Luce is also the oldest Italian film production company in operation.
The Organization
Born in 1924 as LUCE, the Educational Cinematographic Union, with the intuition and intent to recount the actuality of the country, its society and the world through the still new language of moving images, and renamed with Royal Decree the following year, the Istituto Nazionale Luce was soon strongly supported and controlled by Benito Mussolini, who understood and exploited its enormous popular and political potential.
After 90 years and an event that has accompanied all the recent history in parallel and continuity of Italy, that intuition has now become the oldest public cinema institution in the world and, with an archive of tens of thousands of films and three million photographs, an image heritage unrivaled in terms of quantity and richness of themes. So much so that in 2013 the entry for the fund ‘Newsreels and photographs of the Istituto Nazionale LUCE’ in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register was deserved, an Italian asset that has become a worldwide asset.
In educational, informative and propaganda aspect, Luce supplies millions of documents. The country ‘poses’. But the exhibition also tells the reverse side of that image. Due to the realistic nature of cinema and photography, yesterday’s viewer, and even more so today, the rhetoric (and sometimes the awkwardness) of Mussolini’s ‘poses’ in his rallies could not and cannot escape. or the poverty and fatigue of the peasants staged smiling in front of the target, and the discomfort of the soldiers in a war that was said to be triumphant, while suffering a defeat. And the irony of a speaker on working women in the 1950s, the composure of representatives of political parties, the cheerful faces of young people at a party or at a demonstration, reveal the upheavals and demands of a new age of rights against the light In all these reversals of the image, the country reveals and confesses its intimate. His imagination.
The Exhibition
Since its inception, Luce has taken steps to reveal the image of Italians to themselves, and to provide basic knowledge of the country. Thanks to Luce ‘newsreels’, millions of citizens from the 1920s onwards have been able to see and discover cities, distant geographies, unknown populations, different social and cultural forms for the first time. The birth of a public opinion in Italy passes through here, together with the same formation of ‘common places’.
To tell this evolution, the exhibition at the Vittoriano Luce Complex – The Italian imaginaryit moves on two ideal tracks: how Italy has been represented over the decades through the images of Light, and how Italy has revealed itself, confessed, revealed through and despite the images of its official representations.
The path of the vast Ala Brasini del Vittorianoit starts from the concept and from the shape of a ‘strip’: large panels organized according to a thematic-chronological order, on which in more than 20 screens special video installations are projected, montages made ad hoc of hundreds of videos from the Luce Historical Archive. Alongside the moving images, more than 500 photographs from the Archive stop significant details and moments, while text panels deepen the historical and linguistic analysis of the videos. A visual and auditory path of considerable impact, makes each visitor confront a different image, and in which each video dialogues with those close by analogies and differences.
Exhibition itinerary
In the story of this self-portrait of the nation, LUCE – The Italian imaginationit is conceived with a non-static display approach, but as a continuous flow of images. The path starts from the concept and from the shape of a ‘strip’: large panels organized according to a thematic-chronological order, on which more than 20 screens are projected special video installations, montages made ad hoc of hundreds of films from the Luce historical archive. Alongside the moving images, more than 500 splendid photographs from the Archive stop significant details and moments, while text panels deepen the historical and linguistic analysis of the videos. A visual and auditory path of considerable impact, which allows each visitor to deal with a different image, and in which each video dialogues with those close by analogies and differences.
A series of keywordstie the itinerary. This ranges from the 1920s in the city / countryside to the 1930s in autarky, new man, architecture, censorship and propaganda. You get to War and Rebirth, Cassino (icon of the destructive brutality of wars), winners and losers (with little-known and extraordinary sequences, also in color, of the entry of the allies not only in Rome, but also in the depths of the country), modernity / backwardness (a significant parallel of 1960s Italy images), young people, economics, political bodies, neotelevision, and many others.
Some special ‘rooms’ show specific and suggestive aspects. The Chamber of Wonders is a tribute to the travels around the world made by Luce operators; the ‘camera del Duce’ draws an unmissable anthology of Mussolini’s rhetoric and silence, and is opposed to the room of the real country, a moving journey in the faces of Italians in the 1930s.
To recount this evolution, “Light – The Italian Imaginary” moves on two ideal tracks: how Italy has represented itself over the decades through the images of Light, and how Italy has revealed itself, confessed, revealed through and despite the images of its official representations.
And the irony of a speaker on working women in the 1950s, the composure of representatives of political parties, the cheerful faces of young people at a party or at a demonstration, reveal the upheavals and demands of a new age of rights against the light.
In all these reversals of the image, the country reveals and confesses its intimate. His imagination.
In the narrative of this self-portrait of the nation, ‘Luce –The Italian imagination’ is conceived with a non-static exhibition approach, but as a continuous flow of images. The path of the vast Ala Brasini del Vittoriano starts from the concept and the shape of a ‘strip’: large panels organized according to a thematic-chronological order, on which over 20 screens are projected special video installations, montages made ad hoc of hundreds of videos of the ‘Luce historical archive.
Alongside the moving images, more than 500 splendid photographs from the Archive stop significant details and moments, while text panels deepen the historical and linguistic analysis of the videos. A visual and auditory path of considerable impact, which allows each visitor to deal with a different image, and in which each video dialogues with those close by analogies and differences.
Finally, the last space of the exhibition is entirely dedicated to Cinema: with hundreds of photos of directors, actors, sets, and a precious selection of trailers and backstages of films.
Guide Book
Not a guide and more than a catalog, the volume LUCE – The Italian imaginary, presents itself as a continuation of the long journey through the history of the Istituto Luce, and of the century it photographed. Edited by Gabriele D’Autilia, professor of Photography and Cinema at the University of Teramo, with a precious preface by Dacia Maraini, published by Rai Eri with Istituto Luce-Cinecittà, the book, in 350 pages of texts (in Italian and English ) and hundreds of splendid black and white images, reflects the profound meaning of the exhibition: by browsing the photographs of the Luce Archive it is possible to read the different folds of Italy’s journey in the twentieth century.
Thematic chapters chronologically articulated within them, tell the many stages of this journey: Adventures, Propagande, Political bodies, Real Country, the Beautiful Country, Women, Languages, Stars, Italians and Italians. Voices of a country that we see over the decades conquering individuality, rights, knowledge, economic and civil progress, and continually fighting with historical evils such as rhetoric, populism, geographical and social diversity in its development, landscape degradation, the very contradictions of the progress.
Words and images that suggest how 2014 Italy resembles, and comes from, the one browsed in the splendid, revealing photographs of the book.
Victor Emmanuel II Monument
The Victor Emmanuel II National Monument (Italian: Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II) or (mole del) Vittoriano, called Altare della Patria (English: Altar of the Fatherland), is a national monument built in honour of Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of a unified Italy, located in Rome, Italy. It occupies a site between the Piazza Venezia and the Capitoline Hill. It is currently managed by the Polo Museale del Lazio and is owned by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities.
From an architectural perspective, it was conceived as a modern forum, an agora on three levels connected by stairways and dominated by a portico characterized by a colonnade. The complex process of national unity and liberation from foreign domination carried out by King Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy, to whom the monument is dedicated, has a great symbolic and representative value, being architecturally and artistically centred on the Italian unification—for this reason the Vittoriano is considered one of the national symbols of Italy.
It also preserves the Altar of the Fatherland (Italian: Altare della Patria), first an altar of the goddess Rome, then also a shrine of the Italian Unknown Soldier, thus adopting the function of a lay temple consecrated to Italy. Because of its great representative value, the entire Vittoriano is often called the Altare della Patria, although the latter constitutes only a part of the monument.
Located in the centre of ancient Rome, and connected to the modern one by the streets that radiate from Piazza Venezia, it has been consecrated to a wide symbolic value representing a lay temple metaphorically dedicated to a free and united Italy—celebrating by virtue the burial of the Unknown Soldier (the sacrifice for the homeland and for the connected ideals).