GIANLUCA ABBATE
Film director and video artist

Gianluca Abbate is an artist and director of experimental films based in Roma, born in 1980. In 2016, he won a Nastro d'Argento and in 2015 best short film at the Turin Film Festival. In 2020 he was awarded the Efebo d'Oro for New Languages and the Goethe Film Award at the Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin. His films have been screened at the Ann Arbor festival in the United States, at the MAXXI in Rome, MMOMA - Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Museum of Modern Art in Istanbul, MOCA Hiroshima, Palais de Tokyo and broadcast on ARTE France. He has given lectures at the Civic School of Cinema in Milan, Ied Rome, the Academy of Fine Arts in Frosinone and currently teaches at the NABA in Rome.

STATEMENT
Personal research and Utopia

All my work is based on a creative process that consists in selecting, cataloging, and arranging materials taken from different sources, such as archive images, videos, drawings, literary texts, poems, sounds, and so on. This research process is transformed into a continuous intuitive elaboration which, through the recomposition of the chosen materials, shows images with unexpected configurations, which give life to new interpretations. This process led me to discover how strong the connections are between body and vegetation, unconscious and roots. Inside each of us, there is a diorama which is the geographical map of our soul.

Panorama and Supermarket are part of a video art project on contemporary society and its related ethical issues. Panorama is the first film in this series and was released in 2014, while Supermarket in 2018. I'm working on the third installment which I hope to finish next year. The project was suggested to me by Rome, the city where I live, which with its stratifications of buildings and ruins is a metaphor for the mind, in which every experience of the past exerts an influence on the present.

The third work will be titled "Utopia, nostalgia for the future" and will be a heavenly and celestial portrait of the future. Here in the center, there will no longer be the city, people, or supermarkets but the giant, central human body, dismembered as shown in anatomy, where large plants will be born from the bowels and fountains will gush out to build mysterious landscapes. On the sides and in the interstices of the composition, there will be the bizarre inhabitants of this place in celebration.

COS ENDINS

2019
VR / MONO CHANNEL
EXPERIMENTAL 9'
MORE INFO AT WWW.COSENDINS.COM

After so many generational repetitions and beneath so many layers is a territory to be negotiated beyond each person's skin, inside: the cavity that echoes the intimate and singular identity of everyone. The voice that populates this film brings us to various spaces in Matera, from tourist agglomerations to the town's internal spaces (caves, cisterns, lanes, rooms) and the body's own unassailable space: pleasure and desire for other bodies that no one can cancel.

SCREENINGS

76^ VENICE FILM FESTIVAL @ ISTITUTO LUCE CINECITTA' PAVILLON
Screening presentation | VENICE (IT) | September 5, 2019 
ISTITUTO ITALIANO DI CULTURA di Madrid | Exhibition Madrid (SP) | October 24, 2019 
MATERRE VR EXPERIENCE | Exhibition Matera (IT) | November 23 - December 22, 2019
VIDEOFORMES 2020 | Exhibition Clermont Ferrand (FR) | March 12-15, 2020
ZEBRA FILM FESTIVAL | Competition and Awarded (DE) | November 22, 2020
POETRYFEST BRUSSELS | 360° Dome Screening | September 2021
ANIMAPHIX | Scheduled | July 2021

SUPERMARKET

2018
EXPERIMENTAL 8'

A voice says "I would like to make you feel nice and comfortable, and to empty your mind of every single thought..." Thus begins the story, with an invitation to make you fall asleep, in a calm, deep, and peaceful rest, while a chaotic landscape, crowded with people, sets up on the screen. The crowd doesn't seem to have anywhere to go, but they are actually sleeping and they need to dream.

AWARDS:
Best animation/experimental at 22 Faludi Film Festival
Best VR / Experimental Film at Prisma Independent Film Awards
Best Experimental Short Film at Santa Cruz International Film FEstival FECSC

SCREENINGS

36th TORINO FILM FESTIVAL (Torino, Italy) | November 27, 2018
25th VISIONI ITALIANE (Bologna, Italy) | March 1, 2019
35th VIDEOFORMES (Clermont-Ferrand, France) | March 16, 2019
57th ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL (Ann Arbor, USA) | March 26, 2019
CAFA ART MUSEUM - CENTRAL ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS (Beijing, China) | March 30, 2019
5th OVER THE REAL (Lucca, Italy) | April 20, 2019
8thFIVAC FESTIVAL (Camagüey, Cuba) | April 22, 2019
9th NOW&AFTER (Moscow, Russia) | April 30, 2019
15th LAGO FILM FESTIVAL (Ravine Lago, Italy) | July 29, 2019
CONCORTO 2019 (Piacenza, Italy) August 17, 2019
2nd STRANO FILM FESTIVAL (Capestrano, Italy) | August 24, 2019
15th FESTIFREAK LA PLATA (La Plata, Argentina) | September 5, 2019
CHANNELS FESTIVAL'S 2019 VIDEO VISIONS (Melbourne, Australia) | September 5, 2019
INVIDEO 2019 (Crema, Italy) | September 19, 2019
4th CUZCO UNDERGROUND CINEMA FESTIVAL (Cuzco, Peru) | October 3, 2019
7th INDIECORK FILM FESTIVAL(Cork, Ireland) | October 6, 2019
25th MEDFILM FESTIVAL ( Rome, Italy) | November 8, 2019
15th ADAF ATHENS DIGITAL ARTS FESTIVAL(Athens, Greece) | November 10, 2019
FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL DE CINE DE AUTOR ( Jalisco, Mexico) | November 13, 2019
5th SAN JOSE INTERNATIONAL FILM AWARDS (San José, Costa Rica) | November 20, 2019
2nd ROME INDEPENDENT PRISMA AWARDS (Rome, Italy) | November 21, 2019
5th PORI FILM FESTIVAL (City of Pori, Finland) | November 27, 2019
22nd FALUDI FILM FESTIVAL (Budapest, Hungary) | November 27, 2019
23th Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur ( Winterthur Switzerland)) November 5-10, 2019
12th FESTIVAL CINEMA ZERO (Trento, Italy) | November 28, 2019
10th KARAMA HUMAN RIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL (Amman, Jordan) | December 5, 2019
5th CHHATRAPATI SHIVAJI FILM FESTIVAL (Pune, India) | December 29, 2019
2nd LE PRINCE INT'L FILM FESTIVAL 2019 ( Caracas, Venezuela) | January 28, 2020
16th KINOFILM - MANCHESTER (Manchester, UK) | February 25, 2020
11th SKEPTO INT'L FILM FESTIVAL (Cagliari, Italy) | April 1, 2020
20Minmax (Ingolstadt, Germany) March 27 - April 3, 2020
27th Chicago Underground Film Festival (USA) Vovember 16, 2020

PANORAMA

2014
EXPERIMENTAL 7'

Panorama is the first chapter of a trilogy on the city. The video is a review on a polis that stretches away over an infinite global space with no more uninhabited places nor frontiers where we can take refuge. In this landscape, we cannot see any way of readmission for those who have once been excluded, and this recalls imaginary worlds in search of a balance.

AWARDS:
Best short film at 32° Torino Film Festival
Nastro d'Argento 2016
Videoformes 2015 Award Clermont-Ferrand
Visioni Urbane Award at 21° Visioni Italiane
Genova Film Festival Award – Special Jury Award / Special Mention
Call4Robot Award | Robot Festival Buenos Aires
Fondazione Libero Bizzarri | Andrea Pazienza Prize

SCREENINGS

Torino Film Festival 2014 November
Visioni Italiane OfficinemaVisioni Urbane1 | 2015 February 
Terra di Cinema - Paris / Tremblay-en-France  | 2015 April 
OtherMovie -Lugano International Film FestivalPausa 10' | 2015 June
Festival del Cinema Europeo di Lecce| 2015 April 
Salento Finibus TerraeAmbiente| 2015 July 
One Country One FilmItalie Pays a l'Honneur| 2015 June 
Lago Film Fest Concorso Nazionale Cortometraggi | 2015 July 
Krakovski Festiwal GorkiKonkurs | 2015 September 
The Best Italian ShortsPanorama| 2015 November 
Premio Libero Bizzarri - DOC Film FestivalITALIAcortoDOC | 2015 July 
KIMFFInternational Competition| 2015 December 
Genova Film Festival Concorso Nazionale Cortometraggi | 2015 June 
Lucca Film Festival Concorso Cortometraggi | 2016 April 
Journées du Cinéma Italien Contemporain a TunisPanorama | 2016 October 
Festival SiciliAmbiente Concorso Corti | 2016 July 
In Te Cinema Festival Selezione Ufficiale | 2016 September 
Milano MontagnaPanorama | 2016 October 
Rencontres du Cinéma Italien de GrenobleCourts Métrages | 2016 November 
International Film Festival Etiuda and AnimaEurope | 2016 November 
Cinema al MAXXIShortsLeague | 2017 January 
Strano Film FestivalConcorso | 2017 August 
Strano Film Festival | ShowcasePanorama | 2018 April 
L'Isola del CinemaFuorinorma | 2018 June 
MOCA Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (JP) | 2019 June 

MARIO SESTI'S ESSAY DOCUMENTARY
"MONDO SEXY"

Mondo Sexy is an outstanding documentary by critic, journalist, and film director Mario Sesti which explores the world of 1960s erotic documentaries. Mario asked me and Virginia Eleuteri Serpieri to make several sequences for this movie. Mondo Sexy has been presented as a Special Event in the 16th Giornate degli Autori at Venice.

COMMISSIONED WORK
2019-2020

BIOGRAPHY
MAIN EXHIBITION
AND SCREENINGS

Gianluca Abbate is an artist and director of experimental films based in Roma, born in 1980. In 2016, he won a Nastro d'Argento and in 2015 best short film at the Turin Film Festival. In 2020 he was awarded the Efebo d'Oro for New Languages and the Goethe Film Award at the Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin. His films have been screened at the Ann Arbor festival in the United States, at the MAXXI in Rome, MMOMA - Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Museum of Modern Art in Istanbul, MOCA Hiroshima, Palais de Tokyo and broadcast on ARTE France. He has given lectures at the Civic School of Cinema in Milan, Ied Rome, the Academy of Fine Arts in Frosinone and currently teaches at the NABA in Rome.
He has also won several awards such as:
42° Efebo d'Oro Nuovi Linguaggi, Palermo,
Goethe Film Award at Zebra Film Festival, Berlin | Main prize,
Best Experimental Film at Faludi Film Festival,
Best Experimental film at Prisma Independent Film Awards
Silver Ribbon (Nastro d'Argento) awarded by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists,
Best short film at TFF32 (Torino Film Festival)
Main awards at Videoformes in Clermont-Ferrand (FR),
Best animation short movie at Visioni Italiane in Bologna,
Special mention at Genova Film Festival and more.

His works have been shown at national and international museums and exhibitions, such as:
2019 - MOCA Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art "A window to the world" (JP)
2018 - Macro Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome “Fuorinorma” (IT)
2018 - Torrance Art Museum, “Transitions from Public to PostFuture” Los Angeles (USA)
2016 - Istanbul Museum of Modern Art “Art Speaks Out” (TR)
2015 - Maxxi Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo “Cinema al MAXXI” (IT)
2015 - Palais de Tokyo, “ARTE Video Night And L’OPEN VideoArt” Paris (FR)
2013 - MMoma Moscow Museum of Modern Art “NowAndAfter” (RU).

And at several film and video art festivals:
2020 - Efebo d'Oro Palerno (IT)
2020 - Zebra Poetry Film Festival (DE)
2020 - 27th Chicago Underground Film Festival (USA)
2019 - Ann Arbor Film Festival (USA)
2019 - Visioni Italiane (IT)
2018 - Torino Film Festival (IT)
2018 - Oodaaq Festival (FR)
2018 - Lago Film Festival (IT)
2017 - Strano Film Festival (IT)
2017 - Interference Festival Gdańsk (PL)
2016 - Lucca Film Festival (IT)
2015 - Traverse Vidéo (FR)
2015 - Videoformes (FR)
2015 - Athens Digital Arts Festival (GR)
2015 - Channels Video Art Festival (AUS)
2015 - Visioni Italiane (IT)
2015 - MedFilm Festival (IT)
2015 - Genova Film Festival (IT)
2015 - Lago Film Festival (IT)
2015 - Terra di Cinema (FR)
2015 - roBOt Festival (IT)
2014 - Torino Film Festival (IT)
2002 - Bellaria Film Festival (IT)
And more...

Here is a selection of clients with whom I have worked and continue to work over the years, listed in random order.

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

Vimeo

YouTube

EMAIL:

gianlucaabbate80@gmail.com