IT
19/08/2019

Elio Germano’s battle


Giornate degli Autori hosts cinema, theater and new technologies all wrapped up in a unique event revolving around actor and screenwriter Elio Germano. After his well-received experiment with virtual reality applied to the migrant crisis in No Borders, which premiered at Giornate in 2016, the actor is back on the Lido with a work that is at once a play, a film and a VR experience: Red Flag - My Battle. The VR movie grew out of a monologue starring Germano which he also directed and co-wrote with Chiara Lagani, and became a reality when he partnered with Omar Rashid (the film's co-director) and his multimedia project Gold.

Just what is the alarm in the title? Our own times, with the rising popularity of absolutism fomented by the biased or even fake news that plagues our society. While the new technologies revolutionizing communications are presented as being democratic, it is also true that they only facilitate the manipulation of the public. And this is the alarm being sounded by one of Italy's most versatile and popular film stars, who turns into a "great dictator" to stop society's social and political structure from evolving in a direction from which there risks being no way back.

Elio Germano played the poet Leopardi, the "fabulous youth" in Mario Martone's film, and has had numerous star turns in films by the latest generation of Italian filmmakers, such as Diaz by Daniele Vicari,  A Magnificent Haunting by Ferzan Ozpetek, Our Life by Daniele Luchetti and Suburra by Stefano Sollima, among others. Now we find him in a film that, after the success of the stage version, uses and at the same time criticizes the modernity of the medium it relies on - the cutting-edge technology of VR - in a disturbing work that pricks our consciences.

"Germano has proved himself worthy of the trust that so many Italian filmmakers and audiences have placed in him over the years," says Giorgio Gosetti. "At a time when society is lacerated by conflicts, it's interesting to bring an actor to Venice in a never-easy one-man show, in which he takes practically a political stance, asserting his views through his acting and writing and addressing the oversimplification of critical thought. One of Italy's best actors who plays the uncomfortable role of the madman who announces the unspeakable decadence of the world, like Nietzsche before him."

In this experiment, Germano exploits the potential of virtual reality to hypnotize and very nearly manipulate his own audience, so that they will heed the warning in the film's title.

Elio Germano and Omar Rashid will present Red Flag - My Battle VR at the Villa degli Autori on August 31 at 3 pm. VR visors will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.