Derive Veneziane

2015, 38:00 min, color, sound, HD video

"Dérive Veneziane is about Venice. Cities are sometimes represented by strong stereotypes or clichés. Dérive Veneziane tries to show another side of the city, the hidden, the unknown, the mysterious. Through a journey based on the Situationists’ dérive, by night and from a boat… Dérive Veneziane brings notions of darkness, loneliness, discovery, loss, intrigue and phantasmagoria. Drifting by night through Venice, on water. Encountering the unexpected and the unanticipated. A series of resulting tableaux precipitate a new awareness of this urban environment as it is transformed by darkness. Removing all predictable daytime paths, this wandering mise‐en‐scène gives rise to a new awareness. Exploring the psychogeography first defined by Guy Debord, this journey seeks to modulate reality by creating a disorientating undertow and a keen awareness of terroir. Venice by night is stimulating, along the lines of what Honoré de Balzac described as flânerie or 'the gastronomy of the eye'." -- Venice International Film Festival

Author: Antoni Muntadas; Production, realisation and postproduction: Coralí Mercader; Camera 1: Daniele Zoico; Camera 2: Coralí Mercader; Camera 3: Antoni Muntadas; Direct sound: Mario Ciaramitaro; Soundtrack: Jerry Adler; Still photography: Alessandra Mesalli; The boat: Paolo Rosso; Advice on Guy Debord's texts: Xavier Costa; Excerpts from: 'Theory of the Dérive,' Guy Debord, International Situationniste No. 2 (December 1958); Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, Guy Debord, 1955; Psychogeographical Venice, Guy Debord, 1957; The Situationists and the City, Tom McDonough, 2009