Giulia Magno
Esterno giorno
Inspired by a famous exchange of letters between Michelangelo Antonioni and Mark
Rothko, Esterno giorno is an experimental love letter to Italian cinema. Embarking on an
intimate journey in the footsteps of the characters played by Monica Vitti, the filmmaker
poetically intertwines contemporary footage shot across Italy and the Jordanian desert with
excerpts from Antonioni’s films, creating an illusion of continuity between past and present.
From a metaphoric desert (the industrial area of Ravenna, where film masterpiece Red
Desert was shot in 1964) to a real one, the physical spaces explored by the camera
become psychological landscapes, states of mind, atmospheres. As the camera lingers on
the architecture of La Cupola – the futuristic house in Sardinia designed by avant-garde
architect Dante Bini in the 1960s for Antonioni and Vitti, then real-life partners – the line
between reality and fiction starts to blur.
