Ardenza

Director’s Note – Daniela de Felice

Ardenza, where everything burns and is consumed.

I wanted to establish a female point of view that tells the story of the political and sensual emancipation of a young woman in Italy in the 1990s, with the portrait of a generation full of hopes and disillusionment in the background.

The film covers the high school years: that ephemeral period when everything is about to happen. The characters experience the discovery of love in an atmosphere saturated with fervour, utopia and risk. It was important for me to depict the intoxicating exhilaration of political commitment, to represent the energy of the collective and to convey the feeling of omnipotence felt in youth.

The hard metal of the ink pen scratches the paper and soon after, the unruly watercolour makes its way into the image. Everything is alive and moving before it disappears.

The visual universe of the film is linked to the question of memory and its relative withdrawal. I wanted the drawing to give the sensation of vertigo that one feels when a character or a look emerges from the blank sheet of paper, in order to share with the viewer the moment of the birth of the image and the evocation.

There are still too many women who cannot freely dispose of their bodies. Ardenza is dedicated to them.