Director Michelangelo Frammartino unveiled his latest project at Den Frie Center for Contemporary Art in Copenhagen in November. Alberi, his stunning 26-minute video installation, which first screened at MoMA P.S.1 last spring, was receiving its European premiere at CPH:DOX, a festival that awarded its top prize to his second feature, Le Quattro Volte, in 2010. Like that film, Alberi is a hybrid work that combines documentary and staged performance, but operates in the space between video installation and cinema. It describes a mysterious ritual from the southern region of the filmmaker’s native Italy that is well known but little understood. […]
by Paul Dallas on Jan 10, 2014(Distributed by Lorber Films, Le Quattro Volte opens theatrically at the Film Forum on Wednesday, March 30, 2011. Click on one of the previous links to learn more.) They’re called motion pictures, but in the case of Michelangelo Frammartino’s Le Quattro Volte, that term isn’t quite accurate. Motion painting is more like it. Spiritual yet not overtly religious, playful yet dramatic, patient yet never ponderous, Frammartino’s extraordinary celebration of the cycle of life is as close to church as cinema can get. The beauty of this masterfully wrought docu-poem is that for all its superficial “art film” trappings, Le Quattro […]
by Michael Tully on Mar 31, 2011