Find out what the Villa Medici has to offer Rome this summer!
The Villa Medici – The French Academy in Rome, home to stunning Roman views, artists in residence, and rich culture, is located near the Villa Borghese, and ready to host a multitude of events this summer. With 18 acres of gardens, fountains, and artistic sculptures, the Villa Medici remains an oasis of artistic expression reminiscent of the French countryside, while overlooking a modernized Italy. This summer, visitors can enjoy guided tours, as well as specialized events curated by those with experience and expertise in the artistic field.
Festival des Cabanes di Villa Medici | May 25th – October 2nd
Festival des Cabanes di Villa Medici will take place from the 25th of May through the 2nd of October. This event will feature “cabanes” or huts, made of reusable materials. Their occupancy within the gardens is intended to prompt a rethinking of sustainable living and modular housing. The exhibit is specially designed by French studios Dream, Koz, Wald and students from Sciences Po’s Masters in Political Arts (SPEAP) and the École des Arts Décoratifs.
Étincelles / Scintille Mostra dei borsisti di Villa Medici | June, 15th – August 7th
The Étincelles / Scintille Mostra dei borsisti di Villa Medici will take place from the 15th of June until the 7th of August. Curated by Saverio Verini this exhibit, the name of the exhibit translates to “Sparks”, evoking themes of both creation and conflict, the passage of time and its marks left behind. The pieces themselves are developed by the sixteen fellows in residence at the French Academy of Rome (Villa Medici). All projects follow the idea of “archiving,” allowing for accumulation, cataloguing, and repetition, as well as maintaining an interest in landscapes and their respective atmospheres. The featured works are reflections of poetry and politics, and their interactions which are also refelctrive of the fellows which created them.
Jean-Marie Appriou – Art Club #35 | June 25th – September 4th
Also featured will be the launch of French sculptor Jean-Marie Appriou’s art installation, as part of Pier Paolo Pancotto’s new Art Club # 35. The Art Club cycle celebrates the secular heritage of the French Academy’s traditions, particularly featuring international contemporary artists. This will be the event’s first solo exhibition in Rome. With this edition, Apprious revisits the technicalities of art mediums, utilizing aluminum, glass, clay and more to reframe the interactions between the human experience and its functioning universe. There is also a focus on the transitioning between elements, which evokes feelings of nature in its pure form, without neglecting the human artists’ presence within the piece. Throughout the garden of the Villa Medici, the loggias (Loggia Balthus and Loggia de Cleopatra), the Niobides square, the Gypsotheque and the Bird Room, Appriou’s art can be experienced.
Villa Medici Film Festival | September 14th – 18th
Finally, the Villa Medici Film Festival will return to finish off the summer for the second time. From the 14th through the 18th of September, Villa Medici will be transformed into a space dedicated to the celebration of cinematography and all of its aspects. Offering both indoor screening areas and featuring a screening area located within the gardens, the event will provide presentations of the most current films, essays, documentaries, and fiction.
The festival is divided into three sections, the international competition; featuring fourteen films of every genre, hailing from five continents, and all made in the past year. Following is the focus selection, consistent of masterclasses, performances and screenings. And lastly, the projections of the Piazzale; providing a viewing of recent films each night in the main courtyard, encouraging a unification of all spectators alike. The festival will conclude with the presentation of two awards, the Villa Medici Award for best film and the Jury Award for the film that best attracted the jury.
Tickets: €5; Pass three movies: €9
The 14 films selected in competition:
SEE YOU FRIDAY, ROBINSON by Mitra Farahani (2022, France, Switzerland, Iran, Lebanon, 97′)
The chronicle of a perhaps impossible cinematographic meeting between Ebrahim Golestan and Jean-Luc Godard, two major artists who do not enjoy the same recognition in the West.
IN FIELDS OF WORDS by Rania Stephan (2022, Lebanon, 70′)
Can cinema and literature reflect the tragedy of war? Dialoguing with Syrian writer Samar Yazbek, the film weaves visual and sound elements to find meaning in the face of the world’s violence.
DE HUMANI CORPORIS FABRICA by Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (2022, France, 115′)
Today, this film delivers the body to cinema. We discover that human flesh is an unheard-of landscape that exists only thanks to the gazes and attentions of others.
GIGI LA LEGGE by Alessandro Comodin (2022, Italy, France, Belgium, 102′)
Gigi is a police officer in a countryside village where nothing ever happens. One day, however, a young girl throws herself under a train. This is not the first time. Faced with this wave of inexplicable suicides, Gigi begins to investigate a strange world, between reality and fantasy.
HAPPER’S COMET by Tyler Taormina (2022, USA, 62′)
One night, the neighbourhood life of the Long Island suburbs at the height of lockdown. Nocturnal life comes alive and many residents quietly escape into the darkness…
INTO THE VIOLET BELLY by Thùy-Hân Nguyến-Chí (2022, Belgium, Germany, Iceland, Malta, 19′)
The chicken is the disguise of the egg. The chicken exists so that the egg can traverse the ages. That’s what a mother is for. The egg lives like a fugitive, always ahead of its time: it is more than contemporary, it belongs to the future.
KICKING THE CLOUDS by Sky Hopinka (2021, USA, 15′)
A poetic exploration of the filmmaker’s indigenous origin from an audio recording of her grandmother: she tries to learn with her own mother the Pechanga language, already endangered 50 years ago.
THE DAM (LE BARRAGE) by Ali Cherri (2022, France, Sudan, Lebanon, Germany, Serbia, Qatar, 80′)
Sudan, near the Merowe Dam. Maher works in a brick factory fed by the waters of the Nile. Every evening, he wanders into the desert to build a mysterious earthen building. As the Sudanese people rise up for their freedom, his creation begins to come to life…
Sudan, near the Merowe Dam. Maher works in a brick factory fed by the waters of the Nile. Every evening, he wanders into the desert to build a mysterious earthen building. As the Sudanese people rise up for their freedom, his creation begins to come to life…
MANGROVE SCHOOL by Filipa Césarand Sonia Vaz Borges (2022, France, Portugal, Guinea-Bissau, 34′)
A lesson learned and then passed on by the filmmakers after studying the living conditions of students in guerrilla schools in the mangroves of Guinea-Bissau: how does it work?
MOUNE Ô by Maxime Jean-Baptiste (2022, French Guiana, France, Belgium, 16′)Italian premiere
Through the images of the festivities that accompany the premiere of a film in which the filmmaker’s father plays a small role (Jean Galmot aventurier, 1990), Moune Ô reveals the survival of the colonial heritage within a Western collective unconscious.
SAINT OMER by Alice Diop (2022, France, 118′)
Rama, a 30-year-old novelist, attends the trial of Laurence Coly, accused of killing her daughter, which will lead her to question the truth of her own experience of motherhood.
THE DEMANDS OF ORDINARY DEVOTION by Eva Giolo (2022, Italy, 12′)
Built from a game of chance and encounters in Rome’s workshops and houses, this film invites us to reflect on the manufacturing process, the perspective of motherhood, the uncertainties of creation, balance and composition.
WHEN THERE IS NO MORE MUSIC TO WRITE, AND OTHER ROMAN STORIES by Éric Baudelaire (2022, France, Italy, 59′)
Three films in one about the figure of avant-garde composer Alvin Curran through his relationship with Rome in the 1960s and 1970s, marked by the kidnapping of politician Aldo Moro and the revolutionary struggle.
XAR – SUEÑO DE OBSIDIANA by Edgar Calel and Fernando Pereira dos Santos (2022, Brazil, 13’14)
The Kaqchikel Mayan artist Edgar Calel performs a ritual in the pavilion of the São Paulo Biennale in order to make an offering to his ancestors. Between dreams and memories, his spiritual journey leads him to embody his totem animal.
Villa Medici
Viale della Trinità dei Monti, 1
