film showing and discussion
February 20, h 6.30 pm
Triennale – Agorà
Free event

Original and visually daring, NORMAL is a genre-bending documentary that reflects on how female and male identities are performed in everyday interactions, through a collage of immersive scenes filmed all over Italy. Capturing some of the most iconic moments in people’s life, from birth to adulthood, NORMAL reveals how our gender defines us in most of the things we do, affecting our gestures, desires, behaviours, and aspirations.
At the gym or at the beach; in a disco or in a church; at funfairs, public parks and beauty centres: NORMAL explores the collective choreographies of gender in ordinary and familiar situations, resulting in a ballet of moving images that depict the events while simultaneously meditating on their significance. Do we live in a world of constant performance? With its open form and contemplative pace, NORMAL offers a riveting experience into the spectacle of gender in everyday life, inviting the audience to question and unravel the very idea of normality

The showing of the film will be followed by a debate between the director Adele Tulli, the director of photography Clarissa Cappellani, the artist Alice Guareschi and the audience.

Italy / Sweden | original Italian version | 70 min | 2019
a FilmAffair production
in co-production with AAMOD (Audiovisual Archive of the Workers and Democratic Movement)
in association with Istituto Luce Cinecittà and Intramovies
in collaboration with RAI Cinema and Ginestra Film
distributed in Italy by Istituto Luce Cinecittà / foreign distribution Slingshot Film

Adele Tulli is a filmmaker and an academic interested in documentary experimental practices, as well as in gender studies and visual anthropology. In 2018 she has completed a practice-based PhD at Roehampton University in London, exploring subversive film aesthetics within queer and feminist contexts. She has directed award-winning films such as 365 without 377, about the struggles of the LGBT community in India, and Rebel Menopause, on feminist activist Thérèse Clerc. Both films have been broadcasted internationally and have been screened at numerous festivals (Sheffield DocFest, WatchDocs, Guadalajara International FF, Flare BFI/London, Frameline/San Francisco, NewFest/NY, Mix Brasil, Turin LGBT Film Festival, Films de Femmes/Creteil, and many more) and won several awards. Her latest film, Normal, a visual journey through the performance of gender in contemporary Italy, will premiere in 2019.

Alice Guareschi was born in 1976 in Parma (Italy), and currently lives and works in Milano. She graduated in philosophy at the University of Bologna. In 2005 she was resident artist at Palais de Tokyo’s Le Pavillon in Paris, in 2008 she was awarded with the Young Italian Art’s grant promoted by Castello di Rivoli Contemporary Art Museum, in 2011/2012 she was the recipient of the Italian Atelier at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Solo shows include Galleria Alessandro De March (Milano), Galleria Sonia Rosso (Torino), Castello di Rivoli (Torino), DREI Galerie (Cologne) and Joey Ramone Gallery (Rotterdam). Group shows include Exit. Nuove geografie dell’arte in Italia, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Torino), The Final Cut, Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Aperto per Lavori in Corso, PAC (Milano), XV Quadriennale, Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Roma), Disarming Matter, Dunkers Kulturhus (Helsingborg), Fantasmata, Arge/Kunst Galleria Museo (Bolzano), Il Belpaese dell’Arte, Gamec (Bergamo), This and There, Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard (Paris), Autoritratti, MAMbo (Bologna), Andata e Ricordo: souvenir de voyage, Mart (Rovereto), Tutta l’Italia è silenziosa, Accademie di Spagna e Tedesca (Roma).