Director: Ludovico Desideri
Running time: 8mins
Growing up, my favourite segments of the arts and craft shows on children’s TV were the ones where someone would make a gigantic picture out of ordinary objects. On SMart, Mark Speight once created a colossal windmill by pouring table-salt on a black studio floor; while on Art Attack, I always remember one of Neil Buchanan’s famous ‘Big Art Attacks’ making two football players out of clothes he nicked from someone’s washing line. That was the size of your living room – but if that was a Big Art Attack, what on Earth do you call Poggio Moiano’s infiorata?
Each year, the tiny Italian village marks the advent of spring with a festival across its entire municipal area, in which artists painstakingly construct huge art works from flower petals. Ludovico Desideri’s camera will have introduced quite a few international viewers to this historic tradition – and we should be thankful for that; if also a little apprehensive that now that this has been exposed to the world, thousands of tourists might start showing up to trample the art for the sake of a few cheap Instagram posts.
The film’s title, Natura viva, natura morta, roughly translates as “Living nature, still life” – and so fittingly kicks off with a montage displaying the wondrous inspirations for the festival, surrounding the village. The camera dwells on the vivacious greenery of the trees in the hills around Poggio Moiano, vibrant blooms bursting into life, and buzzing insects merrily returning to work as the deathly gloom of another winter finally gives way to spring.
Just as the insects take their cue from the emergent foliage, so too the population of Poggio Moiano springs into action. As Desideri’s camera whisks us through the charming streets of the village, we glimpse skilful hands plucking petals from flowers, and using them to colour in the lines of images etched into the pavement. As the drawings gradually come to live, we are treated to diverse images from stark landscapes to busy fields, to portraits of Christ and Frida Khalo.
When the art is completed, the citizens of the village gather for festivities, featuring a brass band and a march through the streets now festooned with blossoms. And then, as quickly as it all came together, the ravages of time bring summer to a close – and as the art work fades, another march heralds the approach of winter, while the art is crushed into the pavement by cyclists, or gleefully shredded by enthusiastic children. A final shot returns us to the winter sky – the moon hanging above the village in a crisp, cold night – as the world sits waiting for it all to start again.
There is a lot to like here. But there are also quite a few points where Desideri might fine-tune his formula for future projects, if he intends to return to the world of cinematic still-life in particular.
Most importantly, it does not feel as though there is enough time or space devoted to contrast between the seasons. The pacing of Natura viva, natura morta is relentless; insistent on devoting no more than a few seconds to any given image. From the perspective of an audience trying to take in all the wonders of infiorata, it would make sense to give us the chance to sit with a few particularly breath-taking images for longer – especially when they embody what this is all about. The image of Christ, for example, is both arresting, and symbolic of the cycle of death and rebirth that lies at the heart of these festivities.
At the same time, while in the grand scheme of the universe, all of our lived experiences pass in the blink of the proverbial eye, that is not how we experience time. We observe some moments at a crawl and time almost stands still; and that is perhaps why even in an age of micro-videos and churning digital content, we still find the art of still life so absorbing. In this case, witnessing a series of events which uniformly march past at the same rate, even when they are inspired by the passage of time in the natural world, becomes jarring. Desideri’s editing needs to take this into account, and take more care in presenting his images – prioritising and highlighting some of them, while also helping to underscore some of his messaging. As it is, he seems to have underestimated the importance of montage, beyond simply showing things in a clear order.
At the same time, the music chosen to accompany proceedings is liable to take viewers out of the experience. While Desideri has clearly captured a lot of very clear, usable music live at the festival, he declines the opportunity to use it as a consistent backing track for the village scenes. And this could have contrasted nicely with the simple beauty of sounds from the natural world in the opening and closing shots. Instead, a studio recording of a piano concerto from Chopin roars out over the opening imagery – a static and sterile soundtrack supposed to evoke grandeur, but which ultimately tramples, tourist-style, over the serene and peaceful ambience that already serves as the best cinematic soundtrack to the birds and the bees. It is a shame, because Selina Caprino’s sound work probably picked up quite a few wonders that have not made the final cut here.
Finally, for all the gorgeous depictions of nature in spring and summer, Desideri does not devote much time to depicting autumn or winter outside the village, beyond the solitary shot mentioned. Considering there was so much of the flourishing countryside to accompany the village’s coming to life in spring, it would have been nice to accompany some of the shots of the decay within the village with the encroachment of death across the hills as well.
In the end, that means Natura viva, natura morta is a very pleasant catalogue of images, the kind you might find in an in-flight magazine, trying to market Italian beauty-spots to a captive audience already bitten by the travel-bug. But it struggles to be more than that. For a film about the constant cycle of creation, destruction and rebirth at the centre of Poggio Moiano’s annual ritual, there is not enough variation here. There is a rigid adherence to shot durations of no more than five seconds – giving us no time to dwell on any of the imagery. And the actual shots of the natural world which inspire the art festival are never autumnal or wintery, which would have nicely accompanied the shots of the decaying flower-portraits.