Mattotti, Biographical documentary. 50 minutes. Language: Italian with French subtitles. Director Renato Chiocca. Produced by Mithril Production Srl.
Lorenzo Mattotti is one of the most important illustrators in the world.
Born in Brescia in 1954 and living in Paris, he made his debut as a comic author at the end of the 1970s and in the early 1980s founded the Valvoline group with other illustrators.
Over the years, his art has always been in constant movement, from the language of comics, of which he remains one of the most internationally recognised interpreters, to illustration and painting.
As a cartoonist, he is the author of groundbreaking books such as Spartacus, Fuochi and the internationally acclaimed Jekyll & Hyde and Stigmate, written with Claudio Piersanti, published in Italy by Einaudi and a bestseller in France.
His career has taken him through fields such as children's fiction with Pinocchio and Eugenio, winner of the Bratislava Grand Prix, and the illustration of book covers such as the reeditions Garzanti by Pasolini or Romanzo criminale by Giancarlo De Cataldo, magazines such as New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Internazionale, Sole 24 ore Magazine, as well as advertising campaigns for Eni and Aperol and posters for events such as the Cannes Film Festival, the Viareggio Carnival, the Annency Film Festival, Noir in Festival, Estate Romana, Città di Torino.
In recent years, in parallel to his pictorial research, as witnessed by his numerous solo exhibitions at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, Paris, Naples, Milan and Haarlem, he has intensified his relationship with cinema, creating the cartoon Pinocchio by Enzo D'Alò and posters for films such as A cavallo della tigre by Carlo Mazzacurati, L' humanité by Bruno Dumont, I vestiti nuovi dell'imperatore by Alan Taylor and Eros by Michelangelo Antonioni, Steven Soderbergh and Wong Kar Wai, for which he also created the animation.
The documentary on Mattotti was born from the desire to explore his ability to best embody the figure of a contemporary, free and popular artist, well versed in the figurative arts but also in the media, through which he is able to experience a coherent and always dynamic poetic trajectory
The artist's work and the strong suggestion of his images are at the centre of an artistic documentary in which memory becomes a motif of creation and emotion: the artist's work in his studio in Paris, in the exhibitions dedicated to him, echoes the testimonies of friends and collaborators who, over time, have not only come across Mattotti's poetry but have contributed to its definition. A crossfire in which the voices of artists such as Tonino Guerra, Antonio Albanese, Pulitzer Prize winner Art Spiegelman, Carlo Mazzacurati, Enzo D'Alò, Claudio Piersanti, Enzo Borgini, Jerry Kramski and Gabriella Giandelli highlight Mattotti's creative and human personality.
The filmed documentation of these meetings and of the artist's creative process is accompanied by animations, films, readings, exhibitions, urban and human visions, moments and products of an imagination guided by the vision of a multiple art.
Lorenzo Mattotti's work is therefore the protagonist of a film that, following his artistic career, finds the opportunity to bring to life the suggestions of his drawings so that the viewer can experience the intensity and strength of this intimate and popular storyteller through images.
Source Cinemaitaliano.info
Page lorenzo Mattotti's website / On Facebook / Blog /
Documentary discovered and suggested by Antonio Nogueras.