
Directing
Alberto Grifi
Born 1938-05-29 · Rome, Italy
Alberto Grifi (Rome, 1938–2007), a painter, director, cameraman and photographer, is a fundamental figure of Italian experimental and activist cinema. In the first half of the 1960s he worked on the production of documentaries, and in 1964, together with Gianfranco Baruchello, he made La verifica incerta, followed by many other experimental films. With the cult film Anna 1975 he was one of the first to experiment with the use of videotape in an independent film. In 1976 – together with a group of ‘video hoodlums’ – he produced documentaries rarely screened today on youth protests in Milan, Bologna and Rome. Throughout the 1980s he shot industrial documentaries in the United States, Latin America, Africa, Australia and Southeast Asia. Grifi has also produced many radio programmes, published his writings on penitentiaries, contributed to various film magazines and held seminars in many squats, and universities, becoming a reference for future militant filmmakers.
Acting credits
6.7A documentary ostensibly about Anna, a young drug addict taken off the streets by one of the filmmakers. Through her they attempt to explore the social issues from their hippie perspective, instead they create a revealing, uncomfortable self-portrait and inadvertently raise questions about documentary film-making.
Anna
1975
NRAlberto Grifi, an experimental filmmaker, becomes aware of the experiments conducted by Dr. Kanudo, who, following in the footsteps of T. Leary and A. Huxley, documents the effects of psychotropic substances on the human mind. In collaboration with engineer Norsen, Dr. Kanudo invents a machine capable of visualizing mental images. The scientist's goal is to document, in a mirrored manner, the mental experience under the influence of ketamine, a substance known for its hallucinogenic and dissociative effects. Dr. Kanudo agrees to have the experiment filmed. The filmmaker also takes on the task of finding two patients to take ketamine and attends a rave party, where he documents the use of the substance in such gatherings. Meanwhile, in the laboratory, everything is progressing well until an unexpected reaction from the second patient to the administration of the drug and a raid by the authorities threaten to derail the situation.
KomaK
2002
NRFrom Paolo Brunatto's series "Scheggie Di Utopia".
Ritratto di Gianfranco Baruchello
—
7.0After its premiere at the Berlinale Forum in February '75, Anna was also presented in Venice, the film was followed by a very well-participated debate, alongside Alberto Grifi there was Adriano Aprà, and among those present was Tatti Sanguineti, the author of a very articulate critical speech. The footage of this meeting is part of the 30 cassettes containing the video footage from which the film was edited, thanks to the work of Anna Maria Licciardello, the Cineteca Nazionale with the Fondazione Grifi and the La camera ottica laboratory in Gorizia.
Fuori campo di Anna – Presentazione a Venezia, settembre 1975
2025
NRIn the film we find some scrap of slow motion they see a Monica Vitti trying to cry, a meeting between Antonioni and Grifi, a film shot in the concentration camp of Auschwitz with a survivor who recounts those awful moments, a glimpse of Palestine today, Grifi's reflections on the prison.
Autoritratto Auschwitz. L'occhio è per così dire l'evoluzione biologica di una lagrima
2007
NR7 April 2006 Alberto Grifi, a year before his death, is interviewed for the last time by Roberto Silvestri and canecapovolto. What emerges in the interview is the portrait of an underground filmmaker who was always intrigued by the dual aim of pursuing scientific and artistic research simultaneously, and whose cinema, influenced by Grotowski's method, was made by people whose objective was to understand how life works by interpreting roles that allow them to live experiences which were totally different from their own ones.
In viaggio verso Alberto Grifi
2006
No synopsis available yet.
Giravolte
2001
NRNo synopsis available yet.
La spiaggia. Ritratto di Giordano Falzoni
2004
The documentary focuses on the impressive event of the Italian youth world organized at Parco Lambro in Milan in 1976. The gathering, four days dedicated to counterculture and pop music, was attended by students, young people, workers, lumpenproletarians, feminists, gays and young people from extra-parliamentary groups. The memories and testimonies of those who organized, sang or simply participated will be a commentary on the splendid images of the time. For the first time, meaning is given to the exclusive and complete material shot by Alberto Grifi and six other operators at Parco Lambro in 1976.
Nudi Verso la Follia
2004
5.0This film deals with the theme of the heritage left to the underground cinema by the historical avant-garde.
About Special Effects
2001
NRNo synopsis available yet.
La prima volta che Zavattini provò ad usare un videotape
1993
NRNo synopsis available yet.
Alberto Grifi introduce Anna
1976
NRA film about Alfonso, who was the protagonist of the third episode of Paisà (the street urchin who steals the American soldier's shoes). A reflection on neorealism, filmed with Michele Schiavino and Maria Paola Fadda, third special Sony video prize at the Locarno Film Festival.
Addo' sta Rossellini?
1997
NRNo synopsis available yet.
Grifi spiegato ai bambini - Il mattatoio su internet
1994
Alberto Grifi host at the exhibition Visioni Sconsigliate (Pescara, 2004) tells Flavio Sciolè the genesis of his masterpiece 'Anna', the staging reversed, the whole back, the transition from film to the video, the discovery of free spaces.
Alberto Grifi a Visioni Sconsigliate
2011
NRNo synopsis available yet.
Grifi racconta Grifi
2004
NRNo synopsis available yet.
Paperina si riguarda
1993
7.0No synopsis available yet.
Ma chi è questo Grifi
1998
Behind the camera
2.0In the distant future, a spaceship inhabited by a group of young descendants of a "subversive" minority who escaped the destruction of the Earth, recovers a capsule in which the hibernating body of a reactionary warmonger has been preserved, who after having caused war and death, it has abandoned the now unlivable Earth. The visual experimentation aimed at the liberation of the gaze is intertwined with psychedelic visions on the one hand and with the orgone theory of Reichian memory on the other.
Long Live The Orgonauts!
1970
2.0In the distant future, a spaceship inhabited by a group of young descendants of a "subversive" minority who escaped the destruction of the Earth, recovers a capsule in which the hibernating body of a reactionary warmonger has been preserved, who after having caused war and death, it has abandoned the now unlivable Earth. The visual experimentation aimed at the liberation of the gaze is intertwined with psychedelic visions on the one hand and with the orgone theory of Reichian memory on the other.
Long Live The Orgonauts!
1970
6.7A documentary ostensibly about Anna, a young drug addict taken off the streets by one of the filmmakers. Through her they attempt to explore the social issues from their hippie perspective, instead they create a revealing, uncomfortable self-portrait and inadvertently raise questions about documentary film-making.
Anna
1975
6.7A documentary ostensibly about Anna, a young drug addict taken off the streets by one of the filmmakers. Through her they attempt to explore the social issues from their hippie perspective, instead they create a revealing, uncomfortable self-portrait and inadvertently raise questions about documentary film-making.
Anna
1975
6.6A short film containing a collection of clips from various Hollywood movies.
Uncertain Verification
1965
4.0A film about painting and its denial concerning Giordano struggling with the Sleeping Beauty, this is the challenge. Will art, free of museums and academies be able to give back to the child raped and abandoned on the snow, the desire to go on living? Giordano, Prince Charming bearing butterfly catchers and rotating optical games, plods along sinking into the snow and… but revolutionary creativity is not the one that makes the bird in the cage sink: is it the reason why the imprisoned bird breaks the cage.
Il grande freddo
1971
"A partire dal Dolce brings together "portraits-interventions" of a dozen or so thinkers, artists, friends of Gianfranco Baruchello (including extremely rare footage of Jean-François Lyotard), who comment on the concept of the "dolce" (gentle/soft/sweet)" Claudine Eizykman, Les Rendez-vous du Cinéma Expérimental, February 2000
A partire dal dolce
1979
7.0After its premiere at the Berlinale Forum in February '75, Anna was also presented in Venice, the film was followed by a very well-participated debate, alongside Alberto Grifi there was Adriano Aprà, and among those present was Tatti Sanguineti, the author of a very articulate critical speech. The footage of this meeting is part of the 30 cassettes containing the video footage from which the film was edited, thanks to the work of Anna Maria Licciardello, the Cineteca Nazionale with the Fondazione Grifi and the La camera ottica laboratory in Gorizia.
Fuori campo di Anna – Presentazione a Venezia, settembre 1975
2025
7.0After its premiere at the Berlinale Forum in February '75, Anna was also presented in Venice, the film was followed by a very well-participated debate, alongside Alberto Grifi there was Adriano Aprà, and among those present was Tatti Sanguineti, the author of a very articulate critical speech. The footage of this meeting is part of the 30 cassettes containing the video footage from which the film was edited, thanks to the work of Anna Maria Licciardello, the Cineteca Nazionale with the Fondazione Grifi and the La camera ottica laboratory in Gorizia.
Fuori campo di Anna – Presentazione a Venezia, settembre 1975
2025
4.9A prison escape gone wrong. A man and a woman meet in an apocalyptic scenario, in the midst of an obscurantist wave of repression of consciences.
Vigilando reprimere
1972
4.9A prison escape gone wrong. A man and a woman meet in an apocalyptic scenario, in the midst of an obscurantist wave of repression of consciences.
Vigilando reprimere
1972
6.0On a theatrical work by Aldo Braibanti, the special effects used in an attempt to construct a new visual grammar capable of describing "the new geography of boundless perceptions and imaginaries, the emergence of memories from the very distant phylogenetic past of our animal ancestors, a gift of psychotropic substances."
Transfert per Camera verso Virulentia
1967
NRIn the film we find some scrap of slow motion they see a Monica Vitti trying to cry, a meeting between Antonioni and Grifi, a film shot in the concentration camp of Auschwitz with a survivor who recounts those awful moments, a glimpse of Palestine today, Grifi's reflections on the prison.
Autoritratto Auschwitz. L'occhio è per così dire l'evoluzione biologica di una lagrima
2007
NRIn the film we find some scrap of slow motion they see a Monica Vitti trying to cry, a meeting between Antonioni and Grifi, a film shot in the concentration camp of Auschwitz with a survivor who recounts those awful moments, a glimpse of Palestine today, Grifi's reflections on the prison.
Autoritratto Auschwitz. L'occhio è per così dire l'evoluzione biologica di una lagrima
2007
NRIn the film we find some scrap of slow motion they see a Monica Vitti trying to cry, a meeting between Antonioni and Grifi, a film shot in the concentration camp of Auschwitz with a survivor who recounts those awful moments, a glimpse of Palestine today, Grifi's reflections on the prison.
Autoritratto Auschwitz. L'occhio è per così dire l'evoluzione biologica di una lagrima
2007
No synopsis available yet.
Filming Marcel Duchamp
—
They were projected during the theatrical event.
Pezzi dell'Amleto
1966
5.0A day in the life of poet Patrizia Vicinelli who tries for the umpteenth time to free herself from drug addiction.
Frammenti di una vita d'eroina
1977
1.0Between June 26 and 29, 1976, the sixth edition of the Festival of the Juvenile Proletariat took place at Parco Lambro in Milan, an event conceived by the countercultural magazine Re Nudo. The organizers invited Alberto Grifi to film those days filled with meetings, debates, and concerts, but not everything went as planned. This is the 58-minute version (from 27 hours of footage) edited by Grifi himself after the event.
Il Festival del Proletariato Giovanile al Parco Lambro
1976
NRThe intervention of a student at the "counter convention" at the Fabbrica della Comunicazione di Brera, against the convention on anti-psychiatry by A. Vermiglione.
Lia
1977
NRThe intervention of a student at the "counter convention" at the Fabbrica della Comunicazione di Brera, against the convention on anti-psychiatry by A. Vermiglione.
Lia
1977
NRNo synopsis available yet.
La spiaggia. Ritratto di Giordano Falzoni
2004
NRA happening that lasted 12 hours in the Feltrinelli bookshop in Rome. The soundtrack (background weaning) was put together by the crowd, recomposing, without listening to them, pieces of magnetic film that had been distributed around. There are almost all the painters, directors and actors of the Roman avant-garde.
No stop grammatica
1966
Only the working copy exists. The negative was destroyed by the production. With Beppe Lenti. The title says it all: the production, tired of the fact that during the making of the film we were changing the script at night, denied us the generator to shoot some reverse shots. So there are actors who at night, in a concrete statue factory, talk to other actors, in a car cemetery, in the sun.
Nonotte
1961