DE OCCULTA IMAGINE
Written and directed by Stefano P. Testa
Short-Experimental-Documentary, Italy, 2024, 16′
Music by: Luca Severino
Editing: Stefano P. Testa
Production: Fondazione AAMOD
Made as part of the artist residency “Unarchive. Suoni & Visioni”
Screenings
UnArchive – Found Footage Fest
Rome, Italy, 2024
Sheffield DocFest
Sheffield, UK, 2024
Kortfilmfestivalen
Grimstad, Norway, 2024
Riprendersi
Torino, Italy, 2024
ARKIPEL Documentary & Experimental Film Festival
Jakarta, Indonesia, 2024
Digerati Experimental Media Festival
Denver, USA, 2024
L’Ètrange Festival
Paris, France
Bergen Unstable Film Festival
Bergen, Norway, 2024
Antimatter [Media Art]
Victoria, BC, Canada, 2024
ULTRAcinema
Tepic, Mexico, 2024
FLIGHT Mostra Internazionale del cinema di Genova
Genova, Italy, 2024
Short Circuit
Brighton, UK, 2024
Tehran International Short Film Festival
Tehran, Iran, 2024
FrontDoc
Aosta, Italy, 2024
Magma – Mostra di cinema breve
Acireale, Italy, 2024
Beijing ISFF
Beijing, China, 2024
CinemaZERO
Trento, Italy, 2024
The Next Generation Short Film Festival
Bari, Italy, 2024
Pragueshorts Film Festival
Prague, Czech Republic, 2025
Abbàida Film Festival
Sassari, Italy, 2025 / Best Short Award
Bandapart – Festival del cinema in pellicola
Genova, Italy, 2025
Short Film Day – Italian Short Film Center
Northern Hemisphere, 2025
Synopsis
De Occulta Imagine, or a short essay on alchemical transmutation of moving images in which the Spagyric Art is exercised with the intention of extracting Mercurial Spirit from the metals of the Audiovisual Archive of the Labor and Democratic Movement.
Director’s note
Every image has an original meaning to be found in the context in which it was generated. Each image potentially has infinite meanings, to be attributed by relating it to the different contexts in which it is placed and used. Starting from these assumptions, it was decided to examine some documentary films preserved in the AAMOD archive that deal with the theme of the “southern question”, reportages shot in the sixties that tell the state of subordination of Southern Italy compared to the North. These films talk about poverty, emigration, work in the fields, spirituality contested between Catholicism and superstition. Drawing inspiration from the alchemical tradition, the audiovisuals are decontextualized and relocated in a new symbolic and anti-narrative context, following the same operational phases that the alchemist applied in his Opus, in an attempt to obtain the transmutation of matter or a shift of meaning. The images are extracted, decomposed and reassembled following a hermetic logical-syntactic structure, placed in relation to each other according to interpretative schemes derived from the esoteric tradition. The purpose of this work is the denial of a univocal meaning with the invitation to a semantic and emotional drift.
Reviews
● Short Circuit
