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The contemporary scene is distingui-
shed, in an inescapable way, by a mixture of
genres, cultural environments, and different
forms of research. Everything is synchronized
and equal at the center of a circular flow of
information and ideas in which modern or-
thogonal parameters of value have totally di-
sappeared. This condition, diminished in the
arts, is established on one hand by the possi-
bility of an extension of the expressive po-
tential of each artist, and on the other makes
it increasingly difficult to make a straight up
critical analysis of artistic work. A useful tool
to create a balance between these two
aspects, like a key for reading and discer-
nment, can be found as much in the narrative
potential of a single work as in a broader and
more complex body of work, regardless of the
language used from one time to the next. It
is through personal narrative that unedited
values and looks are conveyed, and thanks
to that they are constructed in shared imagi-
nary time.
In this particularly significant way the career
of Anna Franceschini, from her training in
film to the latest installation works, has over
the years developed a deep and coherent per-
sonal narrative in all its facets.
An enviable theoretical and technical kno-
wledge of film has allowed her to move away
from the flattening hegemony of HD techno-
logy, which has already dominated the world
of moving pictures for the past fifteen years,
in favor of the use of 16 mm film and the tools
of the last century in the process of filming
and directing. This is a technical choice with
important and obvious aesthetic effects and
content, namely the radical consideration of
the tools as active contributors to the final
narrative and not as mere tools of production.
In terms of perception, the images Anna puts
in her films can be read through a tactile vi-
sion, like warm and imperfect surfaces that
leave space for analogies and interpretations
with respect to the sensual experience of
each person, and lead to a clear distinction
between the planes of representation and
reality. Although beginning from real indivi-
duals and places, what is displayed on the
screen is in fact quite fictional, and it is based
on this aspect that she founded the narrative
character of each of her works. Reality is ne-
ver described per se; instead it is used and
altered through the camera and the final edi-
ting, to create suggestion and empathy. It is
philological then with respect to images, and
the non-use of audio. This aspect, which many
might see as a technological deficit, instead
leads to a more focused reading of the images
and their succession on the film. The lack of
sound increases the distance from the plane
of reality, amplifying the sense of suspension
that lives in the darkness of the room, and
triggers an internal musicality in the images
themselves, strengthening the role of the vie-
wer as an active performer and the one who
finishes the scene.
Beyond an analysis of her works in film which
are intended for the screen, in considering
the activity of Anna Franceschini we must
also treat with the same attention the multi-
ple facets and interpretations that make up
her cinematic technique. Like Dr. Franken-
stein, Anna fragments and reassembles her
filmic language with love, like an animated
organism in which cinema remains the bea-
ting heart and radiates blood to other organs,
m r s F r a n K e n s T e I n
