STORY FOR AN EMPTY THEATRE
A film by ALEKSANDR BALAGURA and CESARE BEDOGNE'
Country: Italy, Greece
Runtime: 57 mins
Genre: Documentary / Experimental
TRAILER
"This film narrates an intense story of love, disease and death, inspired by the autobiographical novel “Beyond the Blue”, by the Italian film-maker, photographer and writer Cesare Bedognè. Through this cinematic journey gelatin silver pictures merge thus with cinematic shots, abandoning their seemingly static form: they dissolve or slowly take shape, as if still under the action of a developer in the darkroom, gradually revealing different layers of reality" (from a text by Venanzio del Mare)
FILM-MAKERS
Aleksandr Balagura was born in Russia. He graduated from Kiev State University, Department of History and Social Sciences and became a director’s assistant at the Ukrainian Documentary Film Studio, Kiev. Since 1989, he has directed several documentaries which have been screened at many international film festivals, and settled in Genoa, Italy, in 1998.
For the last few years, Italian-born Cesare Bedogné has lived in Greece where he began writing. He has published four collections of poems and short stories to date. His first, autobiographical novel “Oltre l’Azzurro” (“Beyond the Blue”) was published in 2012 by ABao AQu. This novel and the author’s photographs were at the basis of film "Story for an Empty theatre", co-directed Alexandr Balagura.
AWARDS
GREAT INDIAN FILM AND LITERATURE FESTIVAL, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM (ex aequo) 2016
CALCUTTA INTERNATIONAL CULT FILM FESTIVAL, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM 2016
FESTIVAL DEL NUOVO CINEMA DI ALGHERO, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM 2017
MARACAY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, BEST FEATURE DOCUMENTARY 2017
SWITZERLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM 2017
ROMA CINEMA DOC, BEST ITALIAN DOCUMENTARY 2017
CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE - BEST EDITING AWARD, 6th MUMBAI SHORTS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2017
EASTERN NC FILM FESTIVAL (USA), BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM 2017
NEW RENAISSANCE FILM FESTIVAL AMSTERDAM, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM 2018
KODIAK AWARD, ALASKA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018
INNUENDO FILM FESTIVAL, MILANO, SPECIAL MENTION OF THE JURY 2018
TABRIZ CINEMA AWARDS, IRAN 2023, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM, BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY, BEST COSTUMES AND MAKE UP DESIGN
ANDROMEDA FILM FESTIVAL, ISTANBUL 2023, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM
5th VENUS COMMUNITY AWARDS, ISTANBUL 2023, AWARD WINNER
45h CLOSE FILM FESTIVAL, TABRIZ, IRAN 2023, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM
4th GREECE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, Athens, 2023, HONORABLE MENTION
ROME FILM AWARDS, 2024, AWARD WINNER
OFFICIAL SELECTIONS: London Greek Film Festival 2017 (UK), Festival Internazionale del Cinema Documentario Marcellino de Baggis, Mostra del Cinema di Taranto (Italy), International New York Film Festival 2018, Madrid Art Film Festival 2017, Festival Internacional de Cine 2019 (Buenos Aires), West Side Mountains DOC Film Festival (Greece), London International Motion Pictures Awards (UK, 2019), The Hague Global Cinema Festival (2019), Intimalente Film Festival (Italy), New Wave Motion Film Festival (Hong Kong), Blow Up Arthouse Film Festival (Chicago, USA), Chhatrapati Shivaji International Film Festival (Pune, India), Canada's World International Film Festival 2017 (Nomination Best Italian Film), MedFF (Siracusa, Italy), IIPMF (Ancona, Italy), , 1st FICCSUR, Southern Cone International Film Festival (Valparaiso, Chile), Gulf of Naples Independent Film Festival 2017 (Italy), Stockholm Independent Film Festival (Sweden), MAYKOP International Film festival (RU), Wirral International Film Festival (UK), "Disappear Here" Film Festival (Ireland)), Imaginarium Independent Film Festival (USA), 12th Mumbai Shorts International Film Festival, Miami Independent Film Festival, Lift-Off Filmaker Sessions (London), FICMARC - Caribbean Sea International Film Festival 2018, Russian Film Festival (Moscow 2018),), South Film and Arts Academy Festival (Rancagua, Chile), Voce Spettacolo Film Festival (Matera, Italy), Rieti & Sabina Film Festival, Roma Prisma Film Awards (2021), Swedish International Film Festival (2022),Cinematic European film Festival (Romania, 2022), Rome Outcast Independent Film Award (2022), Interdoc Festival (Moscow, 2022), International Moving Film FestIval (Iran 2022), Inspirational Film Festival (Zurich, 2023), Sipontum Arthouse International Film Festival, Manfredonia (Italy 2023), 9th CINEMISTICA Film Festival, Granada, Spain.
PRESS BOOK available upon request
STORY FOR AN EMPTY THEATRE, A REVIEW BY EJ WICKES
“I believe that photography is an adaptation of vision to a spiritual necessity – the eye forms an image which in its turn, through its inmost resonances, refocuses and transforms the gaze itself.” – Cesare Bedognè
By EJ Wickes
A film by Aleksandr Balagura and Cesare Bedognè. Produced by ABao AQu and Studio Incantations, 2015
Experimental art films are rarely self explanatory. The artist, writer, director comes at it with nuances or fragments of dreamlike images. The established perimeters of pacing, structure and development don’t always fit the armature of the visual film experiment. Story for an Empty Theater flows like a diary, or a book of prose written by one who is deeply in love.
Fashioned from the writings and photography by the Italian artist Cesare Bedognè, the work is an amalgamation of a diary, tintype styled photographs and performance art suggestive of contemporary Japanese Butoh and Grimaldi Pantomime. Filmed in locations from the artist’s past; an abandoned sanatorium in the Italian Alps and his present, the island of Lesvos in Greece, Story for an Empty Theater is tied skillfully together by Russian director Aleksandr Balagura.
A lonely chair at the edge of the surf; an abandoned sanatorium, the lush monochromatic texture of the film and it’s melancholy narrative, serve the artists well in their visual monument to love despair, death and abandonment. “Story” moves like living pages from a photo album sifted from memories captured through the lens of the artist’s mind’s eye. To say anything more about this film would almost be a disservice to the viewer. Like paintings and other fine art, we tend to over intellectualize in our search for a clear schematic to their design, rather than just enjoying the sensation of being part of a very well constructed a daydream.
Country: Italy, Greece
Runtime: 57 mins
Genre: Documentary / Experimental
TRAILER
"This film narrates an intense story of love, disease and death, inspired by the autobiographical novel “Beyond the Blue”, by the Italian film-maker, photographer and writer Cesare Bedognè. Through this cinematic journey gelatin silver pictures merge thus with cinematic shots, abandoning their seemingly static form: they dissolve or slowly take shape, as if still under the action of a developer in the darkroom, gradually revealing different layers of reality" (from a text by Venanzio del Mare)
FILM-MAKERS
Aleksandr Balagura was born in Russia. He graduated from Kiev State University, Department of History and Social Sciences and became a director’s assistant at the Ukrainian Documentary Film Studio, Kiev. Since 1989, he has directed several documentaries which have been screened at many international film festivals, and settled in Genoa, Italy, in 1998.
For the last few years, Italian-born Cesare Bedogné has lived in Greece where he began writing. He has published four collections of poems and short stories to date. His first, autobiographical novel “Oltre l’Azzurro” (“Beyond the Blue”) was published in 2012 by ABao AQu. This novel and the author’s photographs were at the basis of film "Story for an Empty theatre", co-directed Alexandr Balagura.
AWARDS
GREAT INDIAN FILM AND LITERATURE FESTIVAL, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM (ex aequo) 2016
CALCUTTA INTERNATIONAL CULT FILM FESTIVAL, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM 2016
FESTIVAL DEL NUOVO CINEMA DI ALGHERO, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM 2017
MARACAY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, BEST FEATURE DOCUMENTARY 2017
SWITZERLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM 2017
ROMA CINEMA DOC, BEST ITALIAN DOCUMENTARY 2017
CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE - BEST EDITING AWARD, 6th MUMBAI SHORTS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2017
EASTERN NC FILM FESTIVAL (USA), BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM 2017
NEW RENAISSANCE FILM FESTIVAL AMSTERDAM, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM 2018
KODIAK AWARD, ALASKA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2018
INNUENDO FILM FESTIVAL, MILANO, SPECIAL MENTION OF THE JURY 2018
TABRIZ CINEMA AWARDS, IRAN 2023, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM, BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY, BEST COSTUMES AND MAKE UP DESIGN
ANDROMEDA FILM FESTIVAL, ISTANBUL 2023, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM
5th VENUS COMMUNITY AWARDS, ISTANBUL 2023, AWARD WINNER
45h CLOSE FILM FESTIVAL, TABRIZ, IRAN 2023, BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM
4th GREECE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, Athens, 2023, HONORABLE MENTION
ROME FILM AWARDS, 2024, AWARD WINNER
OFFICIAL SELECTIONS: London Greek Film Festival 2017 (UK), Festival Internazionale del Cinema Documentario Marcellino de Baggis, Mostra del Cinema di Taranto (Italy), International New York Film Festival 2018, Madrid Art Film Festival 2017, Festival Internacional de Cine 2019 (Buenos Aires), West Side Mountains DOC Film Festival (Greece), London International Motion Pictures Awards (UK, 2019), The Hague Global Cinema Festival (2019), Intimalente Film Festival (Italy), New Wave Motion Film Festival (Hong Kong), Blow Up Arthouse Film Festival (Chicago, USA), Chhatrapati Shivaji International Film Festival (Pune, India), Canada's World International Film Festival 2017 (Nomination Best Italian Film), MedFF (Siracusa, Italy), IIPMF (Ancona, Italy), , 1st FICCSUR, Southern Cone International Film Festival (Valparaiso, Chile), Gulf of Naples Independent Film Festival 2017 (Italy), Stockholm Independent Film Festival (Sweden), MAYKOP International Film festival (RU), Wirral International Film Festival (UK), "Disappear Here" Film Festival (Ireland)), Imaginarium Independent Film Festival (USA), 12th Mumbai Shorts International Film Festival, Miami Independent Film Festival, Lift-Off Filmaker Sessions (London), FICMARC - Caribbean Sea International Film Festival 2018, Russian Film Festival (Moscow 2018),), South Film and Arts Academy Festival (Rancagua, Chile), Voce Spettacolo Film Festival (Matera, Italy), Rieti & Sabina Film Festival, Roma Prisma Film Awards (2021), Swedish International Film Festival (2022),Cinematic European film Festival (Romania, 2022), Rome Outcast Independent Film Award (2022), Interdoc Festival (Moscow, 2022), International Moving Film FestIval (Iran 2022), Inspirational Film Festival (Zurich, 2023), Sipontum Arthouse International Film Festival, Manfredonia (Italy 2023), 9th CINEMISTICA Film Festival, Granada, Spain.
PRESS BOOK available upon request
STORY FOR AN EMPTY THEATRE, A REVIEW BY EJ WICKES
“I believe that photography is an adaptation of vision to a spiritual necessity – the eye forms an image which in its turn, through its inmost resonances, refocuses and transforms the gaze itself.” – Cesare Bedognè
By EJ Wickes
A film by Aleksandr Balagura and Cesare Bedognè. Produced by ABao AQu and Studio Incantations, 2015
Experimental art films are rarely self explanatory. The artist, writer, director comes at it with nuances or fragments of dreamlike images. The established perimeters of pacing, structure and development don’t always fit the armature of the visual film experiment. Story for an Empty Theater flows like a diary, or a book of prose written by one who is deeply in love.
Fashioned from the writings and photography by the Italian artist Cesare Bedognè, the work is an amalgamation of a diary, tintype styled photographs and performance art suggestive of contemporary Japanese Butoh and Grimaldi Pantomime. Filmed in locations from the artist’s past; an abandoned sanatorium in the Italian Alps and his present, the island of Lesvos in Greece, Story for an Empty Theater is tied skillfully together by Russian director Aleksandr Balagura.
A lonely chair at the edge of the surf; an abandoned sanatorium, the lush monochromatic texture of the film and it’s melancholy narrative, serve the artists well in their visual monument to love despair, death and abandonment. “Story” moves like living pages from a photo album sifted from memories captured through the lens of the artist’s mind’s eye. To say anything more about this film would almost be a disservice to the viewer. Like paintings and other fine art, we tend to over intellectualize in our search for a clear schematic to their design, rather than just enjoying the sensation of being part of a very well constructed a daydream.
