TO Casale Monferrato is there A photography festival which takes place every two years and lasts six months. Is the Monfest Which, in the second edition, is like a child who is still taking the measurements of the world.
However, the enthusiasm and words of the artistic director, Maria Teresa Cerretelli, are unequivocal: “Photography speaks a universal language and stages projects and narratives through those extraordinary stages that are the festivals”.
The festival and the authors
And precisely to the staging is dedicated The edition of 2025, until May 4th Which, with a series of themed exhibitions, runs through the fascinating streets of theater, cinema, music, classical and rock. A journey into the arts through vintage and contemporary images. There is the essential work of Carla Cerati On the Living Theater (1967-1984) and the Opera Omnia of Mimmo Cattarinich, photographer of Set and actors of those of the past who with their images bring our heritage of memories to the surface. Authors, such as Lia Pasqualino e Patrizia Mussa Just to name two. Historical archives such as that of Francesco Negri and the new discovery of Silvio Montalenti.
Magical places
A various festival that occupies some wonderful spaces of the city, such as the rooms of the castle or the Philharmonic Academy, a magical place that has a restaurant inside which we have given our irrelevant gourmets stars. And just atAcademy There is an exhibition on Italian theaters, work in progress of Giovanni Hänninen With whom I have been collaborating for some time for indomitable passion and for which I wrote the following text.
Fabulous among the exhibitions
Is a Work in progressas they say, which should be completed since 408 Italian theaters have become, by ministerial decree, national monument. They really are and it certainly didn’t take a plaque to sanction it, rather than the funds for restorations and maintenance and serious programs for the spread of theatrical culture.
Badia Polesine, Social Theater Eugenio Balzan © Giovanni Hänninen
The project
Favolosoteatro is a photographic reconnaissance on the Italian territory, declined through the different types of theaters. Animated by an encyclopedic vocation, but distilled through a choice that looks to the originality and interogeneity of the buildings that over time have hosted lyric, dance, comedy and music.
After a long collaboration with the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Giovanni Hänninen in this new project is measured with one varied mapping that alternates different types, from large buildings to small theaters, which retain the ancient flavor of provincial Italy. A cataloging that finds its matrices in the formal rigor and in the aesthetic propensity, without however neglecting the romantic vein of which all theaters are permeated.
Hänninen’s vision
Hänninen alternates The vision of the stage with the counterfield of the room, but does not neglect the arcoscenic and the mystical gulf, corridors and stages, balconies and foyer. Although the shot is always precise, the author does not escape the seduction of the cuts of light, the thrill of a curtain or simply to the atmosphere that contain these places. They are full of life, sounds, buzz of voices, reminiscences of essences, water of colony and lavender, tell of eras that have followed each other among the drapes and the brocades.
Geometries and prospects
The geometric lines of the photographic gaze widen on the circular forms of architecture, creating a sort of magnificent hypnotic dystonia. The contemporary language of images lashes the historicity and grandeur of places through a constantly rigorous perspective choice.
Giovanni Hänninen observes the places aware of being in front of custodians of the time, since oGni theater encloses the great history of our country – Ducati and Kingdoms, The Risorgimento, two world wars and finally the Republic – and the stories of the protagonists of dramaturgy: stories of deception and betrayals, madness and tragedy. In the vortex of history and stories, the small existences of the multitudes that have alternated in the audience and in the gallery vibrates imperceptible.
The living work
Fabolosoteatro is a living work that resonates through photography. And therefore by observing these works it is as if the curtain opened and a new magic was revealed that invites us to understand how much places and details are able to talk to us. To do this they ask for nothing more than our quiet and silent attention.
A dense program of meetings, conversations and talk animates the Festival. To follow him: https://monfestcasale.it/eventi-Monfest/
Casale Monferrato – Monfest, until May 4, 2025
I woman © RESERVED REPRODUCTION