FFG Wide Angle: Video essay A Chiara - Breath of the Real

This video essay has an eye and an ear for such meaningful details. Chiara Grizzaffi and Astrid Ardenti crafted an elegant and elliptical montage around several stylistic pillars of Carpignano’s. Excerpts from his Calabrian trilogy Mediterranea (2015), A Ciambra (2017) and A Chiara (2021) are reshuffled and grouped to reveal parallels. Each of the three films echoes in the other two, this audiovisual montage gracefully demonstrates. Ardenti and Grizzaffi navigate these films with the director’s own words as a guide. They use sounds and images to elucidate his statements on the relationship between his characters and the camera. In Carpignano’s cinematic Calabria the characters are the catalysts, not the camera. The intimacy his trilogy strives for becomes palpable in the suggestive and sensitive editing of this video essay. Simultaneously and effortlessly, Breath of the Real also hints at other constants in Carpignano’s triptych. How pop songs are patterned throughout as a musical motif. How the hyper-realistic approach of Carpignano still leaves room for oneiric interludes. How long takes allow the viewer - and the camera - to bring the characters’ emotions into focus. Great essays are evocative rather than explicative. They create room for new interpretations. They open the doors of perception to suggest new ways of seeing. That is what this video essay does with the films of Jonas Carpignano. It threads and weaves A Chiara into the intricate lacework he started with Mediterranea and A Ciambra.

Astrid Ardenti (Caracas, 1994) is a filmmaker, photographer, and editor. Her short films have been presented in various national and international film festivals. She is also the Art Director of the online cinema magazine Filmidee.

Chiara Grizzaffi is a film scholar and video essayist based in Milan. She is the author of I film attraverso i film. Dal testo introvabile ai video essay (Mimesis 2017).