2001-2010 Angela Ricci Lucchi Experimental Italy War Yervant Gianikian

Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi – Oh! Uomo (2004)

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Both the Trento History Museum and the Italian History Museum of War of Rovereto came into being immediately after the First World War and have since then combined their exhibition programme with active research into twentieth century history. It is not surprising, then, to find both these museums working together, with the
support of several local authorities, to produce a documentary.
The war cycle by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi finds very vivid echo in the local reality where the Great War still stirs very vibrant memories in the local population and where the physical signs of the conflict are still to be seen in the local territory.
The Trento History Museum houses a vast and original collection of archives “in progress” of autobiographical writing (consisting of more than 600 texts) which describe the personal experience of soldiers and refugees during the First World War, in a border area of highly complex national identity.
Set up more than ten years ago at the Trento History Museum, the “Cinema and History
Archives” acquire and conserve audiovisual material related principally to the history of Trentino from the Great War to the present day. It also organises events to study the relationship between film and historical research and the use of documentary film in the teaching of history.

Parallel to this research into the subjective experience of war, the two museum have also promoted a census of the documentation relative to the Great War to be found in other European archives. It is at this point that the creative research of Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi’s is grafted into the cycle. In the past they
have given proof of their extraordinary skill in working with images from history and writing in an unmistakably eloquent style.
The long-term collaboration with Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi, supported by Diego Leoni’s historical consultancy, has resulted in the production of two film documentaries Prigionieri della Guerra (Prisoners of the war) in 1995 and Su tutte le vette è pace (On the Heights all is Peace) in 1998, both of which have received public and critical acclaim at an international level.

After Prisoners of the war and On the Heights all is Peace, this film concludes Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi’s trilogy on the first world war. From the emblem of totalitarianism to individual physical suffering, the directors use this representation of man’s rampaging violence to draw up an anatomical inventory of the damaged body and examine the consequences of the conflict on children, from 1919 to 1921. From the deconstruction to the artificial reconstruction of the human body, they try to understand how humanity can forget itself and perpetuate these horror.