ANTONIO ROVALDI

(TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG), with Ettore Favini, 2018

To say nothing of the dog is a river voyage on a small iron boat along the last leg of the River Po right up to its delta on the Adriatic Sea. The film is a liquid and immersive journey inside the river, where the point of view of the traveller constantly rises and falls, following the river banks in a continuous alternation of points of view, looking inside and outside the riverbed. To say nothing of the dog is a collection of travel notes, micro-stories hinting at multiple points of view on life along the shores of the river through the gaze of two artists who have long focused their research on the landscape and the relationships it establishes with its inhabitants.
To say nothing of the dog invites the spectator to reflect on a certain idea of movement through the landscape, rereading and rendering the experiences, the stories and the encounters with the people of the Po and its culture through a mapping of the territory, not only in cartographical terms but also physical ones, thanks to a slow and immersive means of transport such as an iron boat. To Say Nothing Of The Dog accompanies the observer as he looks at the river from the inside, and regains familiarity with the slow crossing of places that today are disappearing: the navigation of a river and the life along its banks.

"The video Greenness is an homage to the American writer-philosopher Henry David Thoureau. Here a physical landscape repeatedly visited (the place where Thoureau spent his voluntary isolation in nature, in a house situated on the shores of the Walden pond, in Massachusetts) is evoked by a single word, “greenness”. The meaning of this word sends back to an abstract concept, a dimension of “absolute wilderness” that the artist tries to seize, spreading on a small canvas some layers of various tonalities of green, and listening to a reading of some pages from Walden. But the accelerated rhythm of the images with the voice create from the beginning the impression of short circuit in which sounds and gestures follow phrenetically each other collapsing."

Davide Ferri in "Flash Art" N.260, Ott-Nov. 2006

L'HISTOIRE DE LAYE, 2OO7

A project of Oona Ibar
From an Idea of Antonio Rovaldi

With the collaboration of the Cap Denaz School of Dance of Popenguine (Dakar-Senegal)
Editing and Photography: Antonio Rovaldi
Sound Design: Piernicola Di Muro
Post production: Kyo film studio
A production of: Lord Brummel, Kyo film studio, 2007

In the little Senegalese village whose name is Popenguine on the Atlantic Ocean, a director of a small dance school under construction and his students, every day before the sunset, recover and practice traditional dances and musics from their country within a small star shape school attending a roof for being completed. A village, its people, a little house where everyday all the dancers and musicians goes in order to eat and to pass the time. The history of a group and a small hamlet on the sea that has found music again, after years of Hush.

“Time would pass, old empires would fall and new onestake their place. The relations of classes had to change before i discovered that it’s not quality of goods and utility that matters, but movement, not where you are or what you have, but where you came from, where you are going and the rate at wich you are getting there”. C.L.R James

Scala, one channel installation, 8'40" loop, digital, color, sound, 2000

all images © Antonio Rovaldi