LUCE estratti LUCE 313_Cillo_Silvia Tarquini | Page 6

Luca Bigazzi e Margherita Buy
sul set di Lo spazio bianco
di Francesca Comencini
(2009). Foto © Chico De Luigi
Lanci. Andrej Tarkovskij
e Beppe Lanci sul set di
Nostalghia (1983).
Foto © Bruno Bruni
installations more and more in detail, till I
curated two volumes on his work: Fabrizio
Crisafulli: un teatro dell’essere and La luce
come pensiero (which were both published
by Editoria & Spettacolo in 2010). This was
before Artdigiland was born. Afterwards,
when the publishing house made its
first steps, I extended the range of my
research on light to other authors, besides
continuing to take interest in Crisafulli,
whose volume Luce attiva I translated into
English in 2013 and into French in 2015,
and I published a volume in two languages
on his work Place, Body, Light. The Theatre
of / Il teatro di Fabrizio Crisafulli, curated
by Nika Tomasevic.
Can you shortly describe the character-
istics of the Artdigiland product, which
has a number of new elements in the
publishing sector that, as it is well known,
is facing a crisis?
I have always worked in the publishing
sector, I have worked for publishing
houses and magazines on cinematography.
Since many years I have been following
the progress of the publishing sector and
the “digital revolution”. Today there are
extraordinary systems that enable minor
production and distribution costs – which
is a relevant factor from an ecological
point of view – eliminating waste of paper
due to unsold books.
In 2010, I founded the publishing house
Artdigiland in Dublin, with the help of an
Irish public funding for new start-ups. Our
publications are in various languages, in
the form of e-books and on paper. We use
a system of “print on demand” with the
help of an international affiliated printing
service, and distribute our products world-
wide, both online and through retailers on
a partnership basis. Paper books are the
fruit of a digital process that replaces tradi-
tional typography and allows the updating
of books even daily, which makes them
practically “unlimited”. One of the first pro-
posals I received was from the movie critic
Alberto Spadafora, an interview-book about
the director of photography Luca Bigazzi ,
one of the most famous masters of light in
the Italian cinema. The volume, entitled La
luce necessaria, was published in 2012, and
a more complete version was republished
in 2014 , after the movie La grande bellezza.
And so the subject of light I was working
on spread to a new field, that of the cinema
and I examined in greater detail the poetic
motivations and how these take form in
different tangible forms of work , of the
author being taken into consideration.
This is a view which is of great interest, but
has not been explored much by modern
publishing houses.
Nostalghia. Con Lanci sono emersi, tra l’altro, gli
aspetti simbolici che la luce può offrire al cinema.
Ha illustrato, ad esempio, il concetto tarkovskiano
di “luce dinamica”, una luce che si trasforma nel
corso della scena, svincolandosi dal suo ruolo di
illuminazione e dal realismo, per farsi puro veicolo
di emozioni, stati d’animo, significati. Ma la carriera
di Lanci è molto vasta e fatta di collaborazioni che
vanno da Bolognini a Benigni, dai fratelli Taviani a
Nanni Moretti, per cui sono tanti gli approcci alla
luce che ha attraversato.
La formula del libro-intervista ha un intento par-
ticolare?
Questa scelta si fonda sulla convinzione che il lavo-
ro artistico si intrecci profondamente con gli aspet-
ti personali, con la vita. Per capire un artista trovo
molto utile, se non indispensabile, partire dalla sua
infanzia, dalla formazione, e poi seguire il suo per-
corso di individuazione, fatto di progressive prese
What was it like to work with Bigazzi on
the subject of light?
We discovered that Bigazzi is an artist who
is extremely well informed and able to
describe the multiple aspects of his work
in a clear and well organized manner. What
strikes me most of his approach, together
with his great awareness, is his choice
of essentiality, his disenchantment with
regard to technology. Bigazzi tends
to eliminate whatever is not strictly neces-
sary and any unnecessary technicality.
What followed the volume with Bigazzi?
At that stage, interest in light transformed
into a series of published works. And I am
very pleased because as I was saying, the
field of light is full of extraordinary riches,
but it has not been explored in detail.
From the point of view of the public I feel
there is a new interest in the subject, not
only the technical aspects, but also the
poetic and political ones, and by “political”
I mean the sense of responsibility and
perché, come dicevo, quello della luce è un campo
di straordinaria ricchezza, ma ancora poco esplo-
rato. Dal punto di vista del pubblico, poi, mi sem-
bra vi sia una nuova attenzione al tema, non solo
per quanto riguarda gli aspetti tecnici, ma anche
quelli poetici e politici, intendendo per “politico”
il senso di responsabilità e la lucidità rispetto a ciò
che ci circonda. Ho proseguito con un libro-inter-
vista sul direttore della fotografia Beppe Lanci, che
appartiene a una generazione precedente a quella
di Bigazzi, ma è sempre attentissimo al presente e
ai giovani, tanto da scegliere di insegnare al Cen-
tro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. Nel volume,
che uscirà a fine 2015, la curatrice Monica Pollini
ha ripercorso la carriera di Lanci, ricchissima di
collaborazioni e con “sodalizi” importanti come
quelli con i registi Marco Bellocchio (che ha fat-
to con Lanci 16 film) e Andreij Tarkovsky, che con
Lanci ha realizzato quell’opera straordinaria, im-
portantissima dal punto di vista della luce, che è
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