De Occulta Imagine

Bringing his cinematic alchemy to the archives of the Italian Labour and Democratic Movement, director Stefano P. Testa transmutes the past with an inimitable presence.

Every image has original meaning. And every image has potentially infinite meanings when re-placed and re-used in different contexts. Taking us on a deep dive into the Audio-visual Archive of the Labour and Democratic Movement in Italy, the director transforms images related to the ‘Southern Question’ – news reports and films from the 1960s that deal with the subordinate state of Southern Italy comparative to the North. Starting from these images of inequality, poverty, emigration, spirituality and superstition, De Occulta Imagine leans into the processes of alchemy. The images are extracted, decomposed and reassembled – guided by a syntactic structure derived from the esoteric tradition and driven by a hypnotic score from composer Luca Severino.

This film will screen as part of the programme Shorts: Haunted by the Present.