Italian artist Yuri Ancarani makes unique documentary films that explore how various systems work. With his own inherent anthropological approach, he traces the epic of the quotidian, examining new rituals, new rhetoric, and new gestures. Slowly, somewhere between clinical focus and dramatic pathos. Film is a means of sublimating the everyday reality of the invisible.
HIT Gallery is presenting Ancarani’s film trilogy La malattia del ferro (The Malady of Iron; 2010–12). Each of these films focuses on operations in the context of an unusual working environment on the part of individuals performing strenuous and dangerous work. The Italian title of the trilogy is a reference to cabin fever experienced by sailors during long stretches at sea.
The first in the series is Il Capo (The Chief, 2010), a candid portrait of a foreman in charge of a marble quarry at Carrare, Italy, who manages his team working the heavy machinery with delicate gestures like an orchestra conductor. The central figure works in a tremendously noisy environment, but paradoxically uses the language of silence.
The second film in the series is Piattaforma Luna (Platform Luna, 2011). It brings us to the seldom seen day-to-day routine of a submarine crew deep under the ocean. The result is a film that almost feels like science fiction, based on Ancarani’s real-life voyage with six divers specialized in deep underwater operations, sharing their working and living environment for three days and depicting them at work.
The final film in the trilogy, Da Vinci (2012), follows a surgical robot performing operations guided by a surgeon working remotely. It shows the incision going through the skin and into the patient’s body, made by a robotic arm operating in the body cavity. All three films explore the relationship between man and machine, how they are each subject to the other, and the fascinating choreography of work.
Yuri Ancarani was born in Ravenna, Italy in 1972 and currently works in Milan. He has presented his films at multiple film festivals and reviews. Recent exhibitions include: CAC, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2012); MAXXI (National Museum of the 21st Century Arts), Rome (2012); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2012); N.O. Gallery, Milan (2010); Tirana Institute of Contemporary Art, Tirana, Albania (2008). Ancarani’s film Da Vinci was presented at the Encyclopedic Palace exhibition at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013). He has also participated in group exhibitions such as: Sotto la Strada, la spiaggia (Under the Road, the Beach), the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Torino (2012) and the 5th Prague Biennale (2011). He has won numerous awards, including the Short Film Grand Prize at the 10th International Independent Film Festival in Lisbon, the Audience Award at the Short Film Festival in Trondheim, Norway, and the Grand Prix at the Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival Lab Competition. Ancarani was a 2014 finalist for the Premio MAXXI award in Rome.
