13/09/2022 - VENICE 2022: The documentary by enrico ghezzi and Alessandro Gagliardo is a torrential and magmatic montage film that testifies to the uniqueness of the language of the moving image

Those in Italy who love cinema know enrico ghezzi (the name written all in lowercase, like k.d. lang) as the author of a magnificent essay on Kubrick from 1977, but above all, as one of the creators of late-night TV programmes that brought viewers closer to the most alternative kind of cinema, among them Fuori orario. Cose (mai) viste (introduced by his out-of-sync reflections) and Schegge. Who could not love the person that introduced them to Jean Vigo, Manoel de Oliveira, Ousmane Sembène, Abbas Kiarostami, Elia Suleiman and Zhang Yimou?

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The Last Days of Humanity [+see also:
trailer
film profile], co-directed with Alessandro Gagliardo, is a torrential and magmatic montage documentary that lasts 196 minutes, and which was selected Out of Competition at the 79th Venice International Film Festival. The starting material is that which, over the years, has been acquired, digitized and anarchived (anarchy + archiving), to use one of the authors’ neologisms. Added to this is the private archive of enrico ghezzi, who between the late 70s and early 2000s documented his public and private life, even in its most intimate moments. Within the first few minutes of the film, it is possible to see the daughter of the critic-director, Aura Ghezzi, sitting on the toilet, filmed through the keyhole. Among the many recognisable faces in the film, we can cite Abel Ferrara, Guy Debord, Aleksandr Sokurov, Bela Tarr, Straub&Huillet, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Koji Wakamatsu, Sergej Paradžanov, Otar Iosseliani, Shin'ya Tsukamoto, Luciano Emmer, Bernardo Bertolucci, Carmelo Bene and Federico Fellini. ghezzi also included fragments featuring artists, writers and intellectuals such as Slavoj Žižek, Philippe Garrel, Luciano Emmer, Michel Houellebecq, Michael Pitt, Eva Green, Louis Garrel, Franco Battiato, Paulo Branco, Amir Naderi, David Lynch, John Malkovich and others.

In fact, The Last Days of Humanity isn’t only about cinema. Many images come from news archives and directly from the Russian press agency Ruptly; from the malastradafilm archive; there are images shot from space by astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy; extracts from the Val del Omar archive, which collects the work of Spanish filmmaker, photographer and inventor José Val del Omar. The images are often superimposed, manipulated, and the voices we hear belong to Adelchi Ghezzi, enrico ghezzi and Toni Servillo. Also contributing to this gigantic montage were Maria Hélène Bertino, Dario Castelli, Donatello Fumarola, Rosa Maietta and Gabriele Monaco.  

“For me, cinema is a small machine that brings all the fundamental issues into play. Your relationship with the world first of all," once said enrico ghezzi, now confined to a wheelchair due to Parkinson's. Making sense of this flood of images is not necessary. The Last Days of Humanity is nothing more than the testimony of the uniqueness of the language of the moving image. The only way to enjoy this film is to be overwhelmed by the power of these frames, the only logic being that the universe of images is a space-time continuum, 3 dimensions, 2 of which are spatial and one temporal. Take it or leave it.

The Last Days of Humanity was produced by Matango with Rai Cinema and Luce – Cinecittà in association with Minerva Pictures Group, Cinedora, and Parallelo 41 Produzioni.

(Translated from Italian)

Photogallery 07/09/2022: Venice 2022 - The Last Days of Humanity

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Enrico Ghezzi, Alessandro Gagliardo, Aura Ghezzi, Guseppe D'Amato, Marco Saitta, Gabriele Monaco, Armando Andria
© 2022 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it