PEOPLE AND PIZZA | FILIPPO LA VACCARA E DANILO TORRE

People and pizza (2021) is the result of a collaboration between the director Danilo Torre and the artist Filippo La Vaccara: a short film lasting over four minutes deliberately shot in low resolution. The setting is that of an urban park where certain figures move and perform actions, their faces covered with huge masks made of pale pink paper, simulating a fair complexion, and wire. There is no script, but a post-production editing process renders these improvised movements into a coherent linear sequence that is readable, if not intentional.
Though filmed with outdated technology, deliberately kept low-fi to place it in a past temporal context or at least an undefined time, it brings us back to a matter of pressing relevance, that of social relations in the era of social networks. Wearing masks, performing unusual gestures that become clichés, showcasing studied movements in everyday and domestic contexts, real or fictitious disguises where the screen and the recording play the role of both a filter and a stage at the same time.

To reinforce this sense of distance towards the – five – protagonists, there is a complete absence of voices, no dialogue, no exchange: communication entrusted entirely to a non-verbal language, that of gestures and movements, emphasized to the point of appearing ritualistic.
Tribe or contemporary society? Unwritten codes of behavior or incommunicability? The masks prevent reading expressions and faces, kisses and hugs are mimicked and hindered at the same time, offering a spectacle of clumsy movements and awkward figures, almost in discomfort. The interactions mimic the wide range of emotions that characterize human relationships: anger, love, jealousy, friendship, or resentment, emphasized by a soundtrack oscillating between cartoonish and unintelligible babble.
What unites, reconciles, and connects? Food: a cake, a pizza… a picnic blanket.

A short film with the features of contemporary sitcom, akin to a certain silent cinema, to remind us of the difference between what we are and what we decide to show, between mask and role, between narcissism and loneliness.

People and pizza is the first short film of a trilogy, which is completed by the projects People and piazza and People and people.

Filippo La Vaccara e Danilo Torre
People and pizza, 2021
DV PAL color format, duration 4’19”, sound by Alessandro Linzitto, courtesy the artists.
Link to the video

Filippo La Vaccara e Danilo Torre, People and pizza, 2021, screenshot
Formato DV PAL colore, durata 4’19”, sound di Alessandro Linzitto, courtesy gli artisti

14/10/2023