FILMARILYN

Italy | 1992 | 13 min

Filmarilyn is an example of the inventive and creative power of an artist as unique as Paolo Gioli, a photographer and filmmaker who had always been interested in the power of the image, i.e., in what an image can tell about the world beyond the immediate representation of it. The artist edited together a series of world-renowned photos of Marilyn Monroe, thus literally reanimating the actress, reconstructing her movements and gestures, as though the pictures were frames from a lost film. Gioli’s film does not aspire to be a mere homage, but a poetic reflection on the myth of the star. By way of interpolations that manage to make the movement more fluid, Filmarilyn resuscitates the actress’s body, accomplishing once again something that cinema does constantly for its very essence: create new possibilities of life and at the same time re-imagine the life itself of a woman who, during her life, had already experienced de-materialization and being transformed into an icon. (d.d.)