'Light_Earth_Blue_Silver' a dual film by Roberto Opalio / soundtrack by My Cat Is An Alien
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Light_Earth_Blue_Silver | dual film by Roberto Opalio, soundtrack by My Cat Is An Alien | 2008 / 37 minutes / 4:3 / color / stereo
This "cinematic poetry" dual film by Roberto Opalio was shot in January 2005 in a remote location of Italy's Western Alps, using a 8mm cassette handheld cine camera. In April 2005 a first version was premiered at The Sage Gateshead (Newcastle) and at CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow) during My Cat Is An Alien's live performances. The final editing was made in 2008, adding an original soundtrack by My Cat Is An Alien. This version has been published in a DVD+CD set in 2009 by American label Atavistic and presented at Netwerk Center for Contemporary Art in Aalst (Belgium), Octubre CCC - Centre de Cultura Contemporània in Valencia (Spain), Netmage.10 International Live-Media Festival at Palazzo Re Enzo in Bologna (Italy), Cinema Nova in Brussels, among other international art spaces and multimedia festivals.
For the film Roberto Opalio handcrafted a two-meter-tall alien figure in iron wire, the main feature inhabiting his own artistic imaginary. Both icon and symbol of the transfiguration of the existential vision of the last human being on Earth, the Alien is the only character of Light_Earth_Blue_Silver.
This film shows the Alien's physical and existential voyage along a mountain track, where snow ("Light"), rocks, white birches and pinetrees ("Earth") mark out its physical way to the sky ("Blue"). While the Alien figure in iron wire ("Silver") slowly raises in the Alpine skyline, the transition from an "orizontal" to a "vertical" conception of perspective begins to take shape, where its body seems attracted by a sort of overwhelming, antigravitational force which will ineluctably bring the Alien to a inner transfiguration and transcendental ascension at the basis of the ontological property of being.
As all Roberto Opalio's works, the film is intended to offer wider and multiple levels of interpretation.
"[..] Light_Earth_Blue_Silver, a 35 minute 'dual film' shot in 8mm by Roberto using a handheld cine camera in the Western Alps, communicates this sense of immediacy with great concentration and power. Its sole protagonist is a large wire model of the Alien icon Roberto has been featuring in paitings and drawings over many years. A stick figure with widely extended arms and legs, its head is a single sharply elliptical eye, permanently open and staring out at the universe that surrounds it. In a series of raw ritual gestures, the Alien is dragged and pushed through a rough winter landscape: shown across two screens, the twitching of the wire limbs makes it appear as if the Alien were writhing and crawling over the snow-covered rocks and brown, bare earth. To MCIAA's intense soundtrack, the Alien becomes entangled with branches, twigs and lichen until at the movie's climax, he is seen moving upright against a blue Alpine sky.[..]" - Ken Hollings (from 'A Homemade Universe', The Wire #331 cover article, September 2011)
The film is available through ATAVISTIC WORLDWIDE in the DVD+CD set 'Through the Magnifying Glass of Tomorrow'
My Cat Is An Alien performing
live soundtracks to 'Light_Earth_Blue_Silver' (different events and locations)