Archivissima 2021
Arnaldo Pomodoro makes a sphere
June 4, 2021
La Notte degli Archivi
In occasion of the Notte degli Archivi 2021, the Fondazione shares with the public of Archivissima an unpublished content from the archive of Arnaldo Pomodoro: the experimental film Arnaldo Pomodoro makes a sphere (1968), a preview of the Online Archive portal, which will be freely accessible starting from June 9.
Arnaldo Pomodoro makes a sphere is an experimental film that documents Arnaldo Pomodoro's artistic practice and translates his poetics into the cinematic language. The genesis of this film has been reconstructed thanks to the memories of Arnaldo Pomodoro and some documents preserved in his Archive.
The film was made in 1967 at Stanford, where Pomodoro was teaching as an artist-in-residence for the 1966-1967 academic year. It was here that Pomodoro met Joe Green (Joseph R. Green), a filmmaker from San Francisco, who suggested making a film documenting Pomodoro's artistic practice and poetics, modeled after the films shot by Hans Namuth for Jackson Pollock. The film opens with footage, shot in July 1967, of Sfera grande (1966-1967 – Catalogue Raisonné n. 427), which was at that time placed on the roof of the Italian pavilion at the Expo in Montreal. The film continues with a sequence filmed at Stanford in 1967, in Pomodoro's studio, documenting the stages of working with clay and plaster for a sphere from the Rotanti series. There is another brief sequence filmed in Montreal, followed by footage of the Rotanti series placed along the banks of the Ticino River. This last section and the editing were done in Milano by Giulio Cingoli between January and May 1968. The screenplay for the film was developed by Pomodoro with Francesco Leonetti, a close associate of the artist. The music is by the Berkeley band “The Fryed Suck,” while the voice reciting the poem Triréme, written by Frank O’Hara for Pomodoro in 1965, is that of Toni del Renzio.
The original films of this documentary are stored at Home Movies – Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia (Bologna), and have been restored and digitized by Home Movies as part of a KINE project, with funding from the extraordinary digitization plan for cinematic and audiovisual heritage.
The film is now available at all times and free of charge to all users of the Online Archive..
