NEWSLETTER
Screenings For The Fifth Annual Film Series Will Take Place June 17-19, 2022
Cold Spring, N.Y. - Magazzino Italian Art is pleased to announce the fifth iteration of its annual film series, Cinema in Piazza, presented in partnership with Artecinema and the Cold Spring Film Society. Artecinema is an international festival of films on contemporary art, established in Naples in 1996, curated by Laura Trisorio, which, for several years, has been awarded medals from the President of the Republic of Italy, and the Cold Spring Film Society is a non-profit volunteer-run arts organization based in Cold Spring, NY dedicated to fostering goodwill, community fellowship and appreciation of the moving image arts by screening films in local venues.
Held in the museum’s central courtyard over the course of the June 17-19 weekend from Friday-Sunday, this year’s Cinema in Piazza films will include Melissa McGill’s Red Regatta, Kathy Brew & Roberto Guerra’s Design is One: Lella and Massimo Vignelli, and the late Lina Wertmüller’s Swept Away.
Though Magazzino has hosted this program for the past four years, this is the first year that the museum is combining film screenings with conversations and a book presentation, making it the most involved iteration. This additional programming follows the museum’s continued efforts to advance the scholarship and public appreciation of postwar and contemporary Italian art in the United States.
“We are extremely excited to host this summer's iteration of our Cinema in Piazza series at Magazzino, marking five years of collaboration with institutions both in the Hudson Valley and Italy and strengthening our organization as a place of cultural exchange.
To have this opportunity to further showcase the work of Melissa McGill, an influential artist both internationally and locally, in highlighting her project, Red Regatta, exactly three years after it activated the Venetian lagoon, is a great honor. As an artist so enmeshed within the artistic ecosystem of the Hudson Valley, Melissa McGill will illuminate meaningful ties between our surrounding landscape and that of Venice through her powerful and foreboding ecological message. In selecting Design is One: Lella & Massimo Vignelli for this series, we represent a fundamental influence within our own organization, emphasizing the strong inspiration Lella and Massimo Vignelli had on the visual sensibilities of Magazzino. Finally, we are incredibly honored to present the work of the renowned woman director Lina Wertmüller, closing the series with a screening of her film Swept Away. This iteration of Cinema in Piazza presents itself as a wonderful chance to renew our former model for the series and to hear more personally from creatives, scholars, and directors within an intimate and conversational setting.”
– Vittorio Calabrese, Director of Magazzino Italian Art"
More information on each screening can be found below. Tickets are available at www.magazzino.art.
Friday, June 17th
Screening: Melissa McGill: Red Regatta
Film by Giovanni Pellegrini
This film by Venetian filmmaker Giovanni Pellegrini follows artist Melissa McGill’s independent public art project, Red Regatta, which was presented in collaboration with Associazione Vela al Terzo Venezia and co-organized by Magazzino Italian Art, curated by Chiara Spangaro with project manager Marcella Ferrari and support from Mazzoleni.
From May-September 2019, Red Regatta activated Venice’s lagoon and canals with four large-scale regattas of traditional vela al terzo sailboats hoisted with hand-painted red sails to celebrate the city’s maritime history and call attention to the forces of climate change and mass tourism that threaten its future. The screening will be followed by a Q+A with the artist Melissa McGill and Magazzino’s Curatorial and Programming Assistant, Chiara Mannarino.
In conjunction with the film screening, there will be a book launch of the 200-page volume, Red Regatta. Designed by Beatriz Cifuentes of New York studio Waterhouse Cifuentes, the book includes 250 color photographs, and features McGill’s personal reflections on the making of Red Regatta, including essays by Chiara Spangaro tracing the artist’s body of work and by Silvio Testa, who reveals the secrets and history of the vela al terzo tradition in the lagoon. Red Regatta’s collaborating sailors share their testimonies, collectively expressing passionate dedication to their Venetian family legacies, their city’s history, and the lagoon, with respect and love for their unique and delicate environment, and their hopes for the future.
Saturday, June 18th
Screening: Design is One: Lella & Massimo Vignelli
Film by Kathy Brew and Roberto Guerra
Italian-born Lella and Massimo Vignelli are among the world’s most influential designers. Their work covers such a broad spectrum that one could say they are known by everybody, even those who don’t know their names. Through the scope and integrity of their work, they have influenced the world of design for over 40 years. The film brings us into the work and everyday moments of the Vignellis’ world, capturing their intelligence and creativity, as well as their humanity, warmth, and humor.
Prior to the screening, director Kathy Brew will be in conversation with designer Beatriz Cifuentes, a longtime associate of the Vignellis, who is featured in the film. They will discuss what it was like to work with the Vignellis and how their design philosophy, discipline, and practice carries on in Cifuentes’ own design practice with Waterhouse Cifuentes Design and as a design consultant for Magazzino Italian Art.
Sunday, June 19th
Screening: Swept Away (1974)
Directed by Lina Wertmüller
In celebration of the career and legacy of Lina Wertmüller, we will screen her noteworthy film Swept Away (1974). There will be an introduction by Dr. Elizabeth Alsop beforehand in which she will share information about the production, contemporary reception, and legacy of Swept Away, and situate the film within the broader context of Lina Wertmüller’s career. Dr. Alsop will also offer comments on some of the film’s most salient and controversial themes, drawing on the work of leading critics and film scholars. Audience members will be invited to share their own thoughts and memories of the film before the screening.
About Magazzino Italian Art
Located in Cold Spring, New York, Magazzino Italian Art is a museum and research center dedicated to advancing scholarship and public appreciation of postwar and contemporary Italian art in the United States. The nonprofit museum serves as an advocate for Italian artists as it celebrates the range of their creative practices from Arte Povera to the present. Through its curatorial, scholarly, and public initiatives, Magazzino explores the impact and enduring resonances of Italian art on a global level.
Meaning “warehouse” in Italian, Magazzino was co-founded by Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu. The 20,000 square-foot museum, designed by Spanish architect Miguel Quismondo, opened its doors in 2017, creating a new cultural hub and community resource within the Hudson Valley.
Admission is free to the public.
About Artecinema
Artecinema is an international festival of films on contemporary art established in Naples in 1996, curated by Laura Trisorio which, for several years, has been awarded medals from the President of the Republic of Italy. Each year the festival presents a selection of some thirty documentaries from all over the world about the most important artists, architects and photographers of the last fifty years. Artecinema is one of the most anticipated events of the sector and provides an opportunity for a learning experience as well as social gathering and cultural exchange. www.artecinema.com
About Cold Spring Film Society
The Cold Spring Film Society is a 501(c)(3) non-profit volunteer-run arts organization based in Cold Spring, NY dedicated to fostering goodwill, community fellowship and appreciation of the moving image arts by screening enjoyable films in local venues. Their annual outdoor Summer Film Series at Dockside Park provides an evening of free entertainment in the village’s unique outdoor spaces for people of all ages. In addition to their Summer Film Series, CSFS also programs an indoor Winter Film Series and partners with other local organizations like Boscobel House & Gardens, Hudson Valley Shakespeare, Butterfield Library and the Haldane schools to provide additional screenings and film enrichment programs throughout the year. For more information or if you’re interested in helping out at screenings, please visit coldspringfilm.org or check us out on facebook/coldspringfilm or twitter/coldspringfilm and instagram @coldspringfilm.
About the Speakers
Dr. Elizabeth Alsop
Dr. Elizabeth Alsop is Assistant Professor of Communication and Media at the CUNY School of Professional Studies, and an affiliated faculty member in film studies at The CUNY Graduate Center. Her research on postwar Italian cinema, feminist media history, film aesthetics, and contemporary television has appeared in Feminist Media Studies, [in]Transition, The Journal of Film and Video, The Velvet Light Trap, and various edited volumes. She has also written about film and television for The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and The LA Review of Books. She is currently at work on a book on the cinema of Elaine May.
Kathy Brew
Kathy Brew is an award-winning video maker whose work includes documentaries, experimental work, and public television productions. DESIGN IS ONE: LELLA & MASSIMO VIGNELLI – on the acclaimed designers – is currently in release and has been featured internationally at festivals and other venues. (www.designisonefilm.com) A much earlier experimental documentary work, MIXED MESSAGES, examines gender stereotyping in popular culture and recently screened at the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam and the 2021 Lausanne Underground Film & Video Festival. The film is available on Kanopy and was recently picked up for distribution by the Centre Simone de Beauvoir in Paris.
Brew is also a curator and writer and recently served as Guest Curator for the Museum of Modern Art’s Documentary Fortnight (2016-2020). Other previous positions include: Curator for Lincoln Center’s NY Video Festival; Co-Director of the Margaret Mead Film Festival at the American Museum of Natural History; Director, Thundergulch/Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s new media arts initiative; Curatorial Consultant, WNET, Reel New York; Project Director, Capp Street Project, San Francisco.
Her writing has been published in Women, Art & Technology; Documentary Magazine; Civilization; World Art; Artcoast; Shift; and High Performance. She teaches in the MFA Art Practice Department at the School of Visual Arts and has also taught in the MFA Computer Art department at SVA; the Media Studies graduate department at the New School; NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program; and the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.
She was a Fulbright Scholar in 2018 and spent four months in Peru, where she worked on the editing of Following the Thread, a short film about indigenous weaving communities, along with a portfolio of photographs. The film has recently been finalized with Andean-sensitive music composed by Peruvian artist Pauchi Sasaki and is being distributed by Documentary Educational Resources.
Beatriz Cifuentes
Born in Granada, Spain, and educated in Fine Arts and Design at the University of Granada and the Politecnico di Milano, Beatriz Cifuentes-Caballero began work at Vignelli Associates in 1999, and in 2007 became Vice President of Design. Her work for a wide range of international clients includes corporate identity programs, transportation graphics, signage and wayfinding, book and publication design, product design, exhibition design and web design.
In 2008 she worked with Massimo Vignelli on the redesign of the New York City Subway Diagram, as well as its update in 2010 for the MTA Weekender website and mobile app, and a 2012 printed poster. She has been the creative lead behind numerous international corporate identities, such as Woolworths (South Africa), CorpGroup (Chile), and AbdiIbrahim Pharma (Turkey). Cifuentes is the recipient of a Chicago Atheneum Good Design Award for the website design of Richard Meier and Partners. Her work is now part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
In 2014 she founded the design firm Waterhouse Cifuentes Design with Yoshiki Waterhouse, as well as SuperWarmRed Designs, an online platform that conceives and manufactures timeless products across multiple scales and disciplines.
Melissa McGill
Melissa McGill is a New York based interdisciplinary artist known for ambitious, collaborative, site specific public art projects. They take the form of site-specific, immersive experiences that explore nuanced conversations between land, water, sustainable traditions, and the interconnectedness of all living things. At the heart of her work is a focus on community, meaningful shared experiences and lasting impact. Spanning a variety of media including performance, photography, painting, drawing, sculpture, sound, light, video and immersive installation, McGill has presented both independent public art projects and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally since 1991. She lives in Lenapehoking (Beacon, New York).
Her recent endeavor, Red Regatta, was an independent public art project that activated Venice’s lagoon and canals with four unprecedented large-scale regattas of traditional vela al terzo sailboats hoisted with hand-painted red sails. Her land art project, Constellation, 2015-2017, installed on an island in the Hudson River, lit each night creating a new constellation transforming The Bannerman Castle ruin. She has been exhibiting her artwork nationally and internationally since 1991, and additional recent projects include Palmas, 2014, Manitoga, Garrison, New York; The Campi, 2018, Venice, Italy, as well as solo exhibitions at The Permanent Mission of Italy at the United Nations, New York; TOTAH, New York; White Cube, London; Power House, Memphis; Palazzo Capello, Venice; and CRG Gallery, New York. She is a graduate of The Rhode Island School of Design. Melissa McGill is a member of the Lenape Center Advisory Council and a National Endowment of the Arts ArtWorks Grant recipient. She is represented in the USA by David Totah and by Mazzoleni in Europe and Asia.
For press inquiries, please contact Hannah Gottlieb-Graham or Sarah Miller, ALMA Communications
Photo: Cinema in Piazza, 2021 - Alex Hoyer