“W is a film about the sensual desire of an aging man, getting lost in pursuit of beauty through the irresistible erotic appeal of young flesh and its form as a desperate antidote to the inevitability of destiny and death. The ridiculous, the irrational, the illicit become a twilight hymn to life (and the impossible claim to eternal youth) inspired by beauty, which is the most powerful propeller of the hopeless battles that every man loses against time.” (Lorenzo Castore)

The work is freely inspired by the book La morte a Venezia by Thomas Mann. The story becomes a pretext for a more basic and minimal narrative, in favor of an abstract and dreamlike atmosphere, where a process of radical subtraction brings out its original, more archetypal and primordial soul. W has a hybrid nature, between still image and moving image: a work that from film takes the form of a book, different media that using the same visual materials give rise to works with a nature of their own. The visual layout consists of archival photographs that Castore took of writer Francesco Smeraldi and Fiora Gandolfi in Venice between in 2007 and photographs and films made in Venice and Rome between June and November 2020 with performer Alice Raffaelli, the work’s protagonist.  

The screening will be set to live music with the intervention of violinist Piercarlo Sacco. For the occasion, the artist’s book WALLS, which includes part of the visual materials featured in the film, will be available. The book, published by Grani Edizioni, is accompanied by a text by Emanuele Dattilo.