ANDREA MASTROVITO
I AM NOT LEGEND Book Signing and Film Screening
Wednesday, December 22, 2021
7:00 PM
Book Signing
Mittel Bookstore
Via Lodino 41 – Lodi
9:00 PM
Film Screening
Fanfulla Cinema
Viale Pavia 4, Lodi
Mittel Bookstore and Platea are pleased to host Andrea Mastrovito at Fanfulla cinema in Lodi for the screening of the film "I Am Not Legend." Before the screening, the film catalog is presented at Mittel Bookstore, where Mastrovito will be available for a book signing.
"I Am Not Legend" is a 1 hour and 12 minutes-long work in which the artist uses over a hundred thousand sheets, printing all the frames of George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) in A4 size and intervening on each sheet with white paint to erase the presence of zombies from the original film. The digitized and reassembled sheets follow the new screenplay created by Mastrovito, composed of quotes from about a hundred films, novels, and songs. The reference imagery spans from the literature of Calvino and Primo Levi to cinema history with Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" and the more recent "Joker," touching on music by Beatles, Muse, R.E.M., and others, conveying the many levels the film offers, ranging from philosophy to pop culture. The soundtrack was entirely created by Irish composer Matthew Nolan along with Stephen Shannon, except for the opening and closing music by Maurizio Guarini, a musician from Goblin.
As a culmination of the project, the book "I Am Not Legend – The Companion Book" has been printed, an essential text for understanding the film and investigating the poetics of Andrea Mastrovito. The volume (192 pages, Casa Testori Editions) is divided into two parts: a meticulous reduction to a photo novel of the film, with over 300 frames and the entire screenplay; three essays by Leora Maltz-Leca, curator and art critic, Stefano Leonforte, film critic, and Stefano Raimondi, curator, as well as a text by Davide Dallombra, curator of the solo exhibition "I Am Not Legend" at the Museum of the Twentieth and Contemporary Century at Palazzo Fabroni in Pistoia.
The film "I Am Not Legend" is a work by Andrea Mastrovito in collaboration with Casa Testori Cultural Association, curated by Davide Dall'Ombra, winner of the sixth edition of the Italian Council 2019 – the program for promoting Italian contemporary art worldwide by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism. It was born and developed thanks to the collaboration between various institutions: the Fondation Léa et Napoléon Bullukian in Lyon, Belvedere 21 in Vienna, More Art Association with the Italian Institute of Culture in New York, Magazzino Italian Art in Cold Spring, the Italian Institute of Culture in Toronto, MUDAM in Luxembourg, Laznia Center in Gdansk, and the Italian Institute of Culture in Pretoria.