Sirio Luginbühl

Piero Tortolina has been a point of reference for a whole generation of film lovers. Pioneer of cinema-clubs and great film collector, he has been an invisible protagonist in the history of italian cinema.

A reference to the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli, who died mysteriously on December 15, 1969, while held at the Milan Police Headquarters for an investigation following a bomb explosion.

A young woman dedicates to a solitary pleasure surrounded by precious cushions. Larvae of flies appear in superimposition moving briskly and multiplying until they conquer the entire frame. Numerous signs, scratches and holes deliberately made on the film follow. On this images a tricolor ribbon is again superimposed, which start to burn together with the worms. "Common people’ succumbs to the massacres of the state and to the terrorist attacks that infect Italy.

The film took place at Villa Pisani (Stra-Venezia), near Venice’s lagoon in Porto Marghera (VE) and in a car cemetery. A beautiful girl covered with a semi-transparent gauze and with a gas mask.

I dreamt of finding myself naked sitting in a café. On the table was a cactus. I was watching it. The cactus also looked at me - and the more it looked at me, the more it was blushing.

A re-edit of outtakes from the 1973 film "Ritratto Dell'Artista (Da Narcisso).

A reference to the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli, who died mysteriously on December 15, 1969, while held at the Milan Police Headquarters for an investigation following a bomb explosion.

A young woman dedicates to a solitary pleasure surrounded by precious cushions. Larvae of flies appear in superimposition moving briskly and multiplying until they conquer the entire frame. Numerous signs, scratches and holes deliberately made on the film follow. On this images a tricolor ribbon is again superimposed, which start to burn together with the worms. "Common people’ succumbs to the massacres of the state and to the terrorist attacks that infect Italy.

The film took place at Villa Pisani (Stra-Venezia), near Venice’s lagoon in Porto Marghera (VE) and in a car cemetery. A beautiful girl covered with a semi-transparent gauze and with a gas mask.

I dreamt of finding myself naked sitting in a café. On the table was a cactus. I was watching it. The cactus also looked at me - and the more it looked at me, the more it was blushing.

A re-edit of outtakes from the 1973 film "Ritratto Dell'Artista (Da Narcisso).

A film centered on the graphic and pictorial works of the artist Paolo Sardina, whose images have been painted and scratched directly onto the film.

Animations of abstract shapes on « carton coupé » using the technique of stop-motion.

Outtakes from a lost film made by the director in 1968.

Animations of abstract shapes on « carton coupé » using the technique of stop-motion.

Animations of abstract shapes on « carton coupé » using the technique of stop-motion.

The camera focuses on the face of a model whose body is being rubbed by a vibrating tool shaped like a spider.

The film begins with a shot on the countryside near Padua. A young man goes slowly towards the camera carrying a big red flag, referring to the student revolts of 1968. The camera follows the protagonist ..

Some scenes in black and white show Venice, Piazza San Marco, people who walk, feed pigeons and paint. The film records the gestures of boys hugging each other, touching each other; then childhood and provocative scenes alternate. Venice is dying.

Experimental short filmed between 1987 and 2002.

Images of everyday life: a walk, the village fair with the carousel and children playing alternate with scenes in which the young couple kisses passionately in a little church, spied by the indiscreet eye of the camera.

The film is a denunciation of Western capitalist society, which exploits the poorest regions in the world's Orient. The film opens with a closeup on a newspaper article that reads, « What Italian industry offers Asia. Modern manufacturing, sophisticated technology and willingness to do business with the East ». The following sequence is set on a beach, where musicians play Arabic music, and a dancer moves sensually. At a certain point the director, Luginbühl, interrupts the scene, even slapping the dancer's face. This is clearly an allegory of how Western capitalism exploits and enslaves the East.

Experimental short.

A particular shot, made with a lens that breaks up the image field into fragments and reproduces the optics of a fly, explores a room where there is a girl with a guitar. The shot, back to normal, shows a container with the fly and a jar of honey. The girl than performs various actions: she plays the guitar, collects honey from the jar with a finger, reads a book while the buzzing becomes insistent. In this way, an ambiguous and unusual relationship with the insect arises.

Experimental interpretation of the Narcissus myth.

The film is dedicated to Vittorio and Silvio Loffredo who, in the second half of the 1930s in Paris, using film excerpts found at flea markets, created a memorable collage film

The film is set in an industrial landfill in the Petrochemical area of Porto Marghera (Venice). Here, among the toxic residues, a happening takes place: a boy and a girl without knowing each other before are invited to undress and kiss in front of ‘fake’ journalists, photographers and operators. The soundtrack is composed by different environmental noises. The director denounces in this way the pollution and the landscape changing, focusing on the vision of two beautiful bodies kissing.

A tribute to experimental cinema of the '60s and '70s.

This « comic strip » of alienation takes place within the walls of a bourgeois house, in a valley created by the toxic red-violet waste of a large chemical industry. In the background, popular songs from the '60s.

In an abandoned house, behind a wall, a series of photographs appears, a collage that brings back to the past.

Contrast between different portraits of women, between the public and the intimate.

A young woman comes home and discovers that she has her period. She is forced to change her sanitary napkins continuously, while her husband eats eggs in the kitchen. Towels invade the room, then the apartment, then fall into the streets of the city. The chosen places are the headquarters of financial, political, police and religious power. They are centers of oppression.

The film portrays the political environment between the end of the '60s and the beginning of the '70s in Italy. Images of a wandering young girl are alternated with those of a man's corpse in front of an industrial landscape. The man's corpse is a metaphor of the worker forced to work dehumanizing hours. The girl, on the other hand, is the symbol of innocence. This is Luginbühl's accusation directed at a passive and powerless society. However, hope is represented in the final sequences, where Luginbühl's child, Cecilia, is shown as the embodiment of future generations.

Experimental short by Sirio Luginbühl.

The director films a woman being tortured.

1971 / 8mm / color / sound

A girl is taking pictures on the notes of "1970" by The Stooges, but it’s only in the end that we’re allowed to see the subject of her photos.

The film aims to show the fall of revolutionary ideals and broken ideologies.

The protagonist is a girl here, like Alice in the Pays des Merveilles, intrigued by the particularity of the story, coming from the garden of PaRDeS, search for research, connaissance, inspiration.