After presenting a primitive-like conductor of excavators in a quarry (Il Capo) followed by gas platform workers living inside a capsule (Piattaforma Luna), Yuri Ancarani completes his trilogy of work with this ‘arcade reminiscent’ operating theatre, where his previous equation is reversed and the machine now “lives” inside the human body. The film follows Da Vinci, a robot-surgeon, located in the Department of Robotic Surgery in Pisa, during a routine operation. Maintaining the ideal balance between the realistic approach of a film documenting a surgery and the elegant poetic depiction of a dedicated doctor’s handling of a joystick, Yuri Ancarani brilliantly builds up the spectators’ suspense until the surgery is finished and the camera exits the body. It is then that an understanding of the place and actions involved is revealed, as a consequence of all the small fragments of images, which have proceeded it, fall into place.
review
interview
Your film has already been described as an “informal success”. Why do you think the audience is intrigued that much by your film? I think people are interested because this is the first time they are able to watch a needle from the other side. Also, what is really important for me is that during the last scene, the domino scene, the music is composed by a young and talented musician, Lorenzo Senni, who has used different pieces of sounds used in videogames during the last 20 years. This is like a representation of our generation. This is kind of a paradoxical situation because we have considered in the last few years that playing videogames is a waste of time, but actually it appears as a very precious skill.
In this video-game driven film world, which shows the high contrast between the natural (human body) and the artificial (operating robot), strong film techniques are utilized to attribute unique cinematic value. Sequences of (inevitable) close ups, medium and long shots skillfully edited to the rhythm of the heartbeat and carefully crafted “chiaroscuro” cinematography, stretching out to expressionistic aesthetics, perfectly serve the rotation between a human (doctors) and an artificial (Da Vinci) point of view. The film artfully manipulates us to a paradoxical condition where “sci-fi” oriented elements are part of our everyday life and capable video game players might eventually save a life in a surgery. All these, wrapped up with a subtle sense of witty humor, allow us to “upgrade” to the “next level” that is an exquisite audiovisual experience.
Yuri Ancarani Kleber Mendoça Filho
review & interview by Eirini Nikopoulou (Greece) nisimazine rotterdam shorts // 13