Thanks to the renewed and valuable collaboration with the "Giuseppe Verdi" State Conservatory, we will witness a unique performance. Students from the Applied Music and Sound Design courses at the Ravenna Conservatory will set a work by Benjamin Christensen to music.
Composers: Giulia Bedeschi, Gabriel De Pace, Damiano Ferretti.
Lecturers: Paolo Marzocchi and Andrea Veneri.
Ensemble 20.21 conducted by Damiano Ferretti.
"HÄXAN is a 1922 feature film produced by Svensk Filmindustri.
The film alternates documentary-style sequences (devilish iconography, various types of spells, the relationship between witchcraft and hysteria) with episodes based mainly on dramatic action.
The central story is set in the 15th century, and begins with an accusation of witchcraft brought against an old beggar woman. Interrogated and tortured by the inquisitor monks, the woman confesses to having taken part in the Sabbath and describes all its details: the anointing of the body, the flying on the broomstick, the dances and banquets with demons, the sacrilegious kiss to the Devil.
"HÄXAN", whose Italian title is La stregoneria attraverso i secoli (Witchcraft through the centuries), is a 1922 film directed by Benjamin Christensen. It is an atypical film, which - at a time when genres had not yet been codified - sets out to cast an "objective" gaze on a disturbing and dramatic subject such as witchcraft. With today's categories, it would be possible to define it almost as a ‘docu-fiction’, a film that alternates moments with a proto-documentary slant with others of "reenactment", which is the staging of what is being told. If the documentary part may seem naive at first sight, there are, however, solutions (such as the models of the cosmos, or the models of hell) that are experimented with for the first time in this film, and that will become clichés in the documentaries of the following decades, and in particular in television documentaries.
In the actual filmic parts, however, the discourse changes completely. The expressionist lighting, the animated parts, the "special effects" and the extreme realism of some parts make Christensen's film very different from other masterpieces of cinema of those years, such as Murnau's Nosferatu or Wiene's Caligari, and in some ways much more disturbing. The reconstruction of the witch's lair, or the part of the inquisition, and then of the tortures (with the fantastic Sabbath sequence) are of an impressive beauty and richness of detail.
Just as incredible is the almost "proto-feminist" slant of the narration, for the times probably quite revolutionary.
To set such a work to music, also because of its length and different moments, was perhaps the greatest challenge. The music is entrusted to a mixed ensemble, enriched by three female voices."
- Prof. Paolo Marzocchi.
At 9 p.m. on 15 October, join us for a unique experience that combines cinema and music in an immersive atmosphere!
