Leading the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan during and after WWII, the Venice World Premiere turns on 'the evocative power of words, music and archives, as well as a reflection on the meaning and direction of biopics' “Anatomy of a Portrait” (“Anatomia di un Ritratto”) will have its world premiere in the Venetian Nights program of Venice Days on Sept. 4. Directed by Francesco Clerici (“Hand Gestures”) and Mattia Colombo (“Trees That Walk,” “I Wanna Sleep With You”), the documentary pieces together the story of Fernanda Wittgens, Italy’s first female museum director. Fernanda led the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan during WWII and through its period of reconstruction.
A courageous anti-fascist activist during the Mussolini regime, she was sentenced by the Fascist Special Tribunal to 20 years in prison, but was released after the war ended. Having very limited historical material about Fernanda at their disposal, the directors decided to bring together actress Sara Drago and art historian Giovanna Ginex into a recording studio in order to “bring to life” Fernanda’s voice based on her letters and Giovanna’s extensive research on Fernanda’s life for nearly 40 years. The Italian-Swiss documentary is produced by Marco Malfi Chindemi’s Rossofilm with Luce Cinecittà and Lab 80 Film, in co-production with Rough Cat and RSI – Radiotelevisione Svizzera.
Variety interviewed the directors Francesco Clerici and Mattia Colombo shortly before its Venice world premiere. How did you decide how you would tell Fernanda’s story? Francesco Clerici: What really remains of Fernanda Wittgens are her letters (only those she wrote, not those she received), a few photographs and a five-second clip from a video.
That was our starting point: to think about how to tell her story, not by forcibly filling in the gaps left behind, but – as the film puts it – by ‘respecting’ them. A biopic is always an act of hagiographic fabrication, and it immediately struck us as a contrivance born of convention, but not the right approach. The turning point came when we met art historian Giovanna Ginex for a preliminary interview about Fernanda Wittgens.
We realized that what really mattered was not only what remained of Fernanda, but how she continued to resonate in someone who had devoted so much of her life to studying her. Giovanna had spent almost forty years researching Fernanda and, in a way, had already created her own portrait of her. So we began to think that perhaps we shouldn’t try to fill the absence of images at all, but instead film what happens when someone tries to bring a person back through the traces she has left behind.
We brought in Sara Drago, an actress from another generation, to give Giovanna’s imagined Fernanda Wittgens a voice, a body and a gaze. But we weren’t interested in having an actress simply impersonate Fernanda. We wanted to see whether an actress could become a space through which Fernanda might somehow reappear.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
