The Films of Arcangelo Mazzoleni

Award-winning artist, filmmaker, poet, photographer, and academic Arcangelo Mazzoleni has been making visually-arresting experimental films on Super 8mm for over 40 years. The sumptuous and tactile quality of his work recalls the painterly proclivities of Stan Brakhage and the ornate, ritualistic style of Kenneth Anger, though Mazzoleni's oeuvre transcends these antecedents to offer something new and altogether different. His cinematic evocations plumb the depths of light, color, texture, and film materiality while deftly weaving together dreams, myths, philosophy, poetry, and hallucinogenic imagery into a highly personal and indelible vision. As noted by the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art (Rome): "Mazzoleni's cinema on film (shot with experimental techniques, mixing live sequences, direct painting on film, animated compositions and pixelation: that is, shooting real characters with stop-motion) move from the need to articulate the figurative space of the frame [to] a movement that expands the limits of the traditional painting, focusing on chromatic research and dizzying variations in the rhythms of the montage. The sequences are often constructed, like musical 'compositions,' with combinations of single frames, variously intertwined and interspersed with recurring visual leitmotifs."

Under the leadership of our former Executive Director, MM Serra, The Film-Makers' Cooperative programmed Mazzoleni's work in our 8th Annual New Year / New Work Festival. Mazzoleni's Super 8mm films have since been digitized by the National Archive of Corporate Cinema - Experimental Cinematography Center of Rome (Archivio Nazionale Cinema d'Impresa - Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia / Cineteca Nazionale di Roma). These digital transfers will be screened at The Film-Makers' Cooperative, followed by a virtual Q&A zoom discussion with Mazzoleni, moderated by Matt McKinzie.