Futuri Aprili (trailer)
"Futuri Aprili" is a fashion film that narrates the sensitivity of young identities towards important social issues, from the perception of their own bodies to their vision of the future. Selected through street casting, the interviewees are diverse yet connected by their belonging to a transitional age group; not children, nor adults, nor adolescents, but that elusive figure Francesco Bonami and Raf Simons referred to as "The fourth sex" in their work "The Fourth Sex: The Extreme Territory of Adolescence." Their inner thoughts find a means of expression through this film.
The poses are static, minimalist, and almost photographic, but accompanied by the authentic and sincere voices of the filmed subjects. The camera frames intimately and introspectively to allow us to get closer to the interviewees, while the editing, dynamic and present, gives the video a contemporary and more experimental language, without, however, distancing it from its narrative nature.
Each interviewee is stripped of their surroundings and made to converge in a limbo, an abstraction of the mind. Conversely, some subjects are placed in external locations to represent liminal spaces, which can be defined as: "Physical liminal spaces are easy to identify: an elevator, an airport, a bridge, a train. All places where one spends some time, more or less, waiting to get somewhere else. However, there are also less immediate liminal spaces, namely psychological ones, which can be divided into emotional and metaphorical. The former accompany life transitions: a divorce, a move, adolescence itself..." (Biancamaria Cavallini, Il Sole 24 Ore).
Similar to these locations, youth is treated as a condition naturally imposed but artificially elevated to a rite of passage and thus considered a liminal mental space.
In addition to the film, for this project, a podcast and a fanzine were also created. The podcast gives more space to voices, their pauses, and slight tremors. Where editing is forced to take away, each audio episode restores, reminding the viewer of the three-dimensionality and facets of the interviewees.
The title is a tribute to a poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini entitled "Supplica a Mia Madre," in which he combines the words "Futuro Aprile" as a poetic representation of a happy future. 'Aprili' also refers to the word 'springtime,' which in English etymology commonly symbolizes 'youth.' The choice of this tribute is due to the fact that Pasolini is also the author of the project's main cinematic reference, namely 'Comizi d'Amore,' a 1963 film that was one of the first to deal with such themes in a documentary manner and to give space to youth cultures to talk about themselves and the future they envision.
Enrico Bellenghi
Enrico Bellenghi is a young Italian film director and photographer based in London and Milan.
His education in various artistic fields in universities: Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan and University of the Arts London.
