CONTROFIGURA

2016, 75”, produced by Marco Alessi & Ra di Martino for Dugong Films, Beatrice Bulgari for In Between Art Film, Snaporazverein & Produzioni Illuminati

RÄ DI MARTINO

Rä di Martino is a graduate of Chelsea College of Art and of the Slade School of Art. After spending a few years in London and New York she now lives and works in Italy. Her films, installations and photos have been shown in many institutions and film festivals including: Moma-PS1, NY; Tate Modern, London; MCA Chicago; Palazzo Grassi, Venice; Magasin, Grenoble; Fondazione Sandretto, Turin and HangarBicocca Milan; Artists Space, New York; NiMK Netherlands Media Arts, Amsterdam; the Busan Biennial; Manifesta; the Turin Triennal, Locarno and Torino International Film Festival, Viper Basel and Transmediale Berlin.With the medium length documentary The Show MAS Go On she has participated to the Venice Film Festival 2014, winning the SIAE award and Gillo Pontecorvo award, a special mention at Salina DocFest, and a Nastro d’argento for best doc-film 2015.
(2004-2013) per la quale ha fotografato ogni anno la tomba reale di Marilyn Monroe e le serie di No More Stars (2010-2013) che documentano set cinematografici abbandonati in deserti del Nord Africa che diventano delle rovine dell’immaginario.

In Rä di Martino’s film Controfigura (2016), a small film crew is wandering in Marrakesh and the surrounding desert. They are looking for locations for the remake of a US film in which a man decides to reach his home by crossing the city swimming from pool to pool, as if it were a continuous and uninterrupted flow of water.

For the crew it is an opportunity to meet expats and local people, interlocutors with whom to talk about why it was decided to make this film today and why it is interesting to do so in Marrakech, a desert city that hosts hundreds of swimming pools and is becoming a new golf capital. A playground for the international jet-set that, beyond the walls of their villas, builds ideal worlds, totally impermeable to their surroundings, and in stark contrast to the local reality.

Corrado, a ‘stand-in’, tries the shots to find the path through the pools that the main character will swim through. At the same time, it’s as if the need to become more than just a stand-in takes over him. Corrado feels all the dignity of an actor and wants to demonstrate he could be as good as any other professional actor. And so, while we observe his struggles, we start seeing the real actors and crew working on set between doubts and shouts. A film looking for where the real film is.