Otnarat. Taranto a futuro inverso 2009Taranto“Otnarat. Taranto in reverse future” Whether one reaches Taranto from Brindisi, along the Punta Penna bridge, or from Bari, surrounded by the fumes of the steelworks that announce the edge of the city from miles away, one immediately notices a transformed landscape, unlike the usual Apulian one: first the Military Arsenal, built in the mid-nineteenth century, and later Italsider (now Ilva), upend the city of the two seas with two walls, laying hands on Taranto and dictating, within a single century, new human and urban rhythms. The 1960s were the years of the economic miracle, and for Taranto, as for the rest of the South, big industry represented the hope of a social redemption awaited for decades. The Taranto-born artist and sculptor Nicola Carrino portrayed that hope in those years as chimneys smoking with colour and a people in great ferment; fifty years later, in an unpublished series of drawings (Apocalypse Taranto, 2003, prints on paper), the artist considers that hope to have been betrayed. From this unacceptable situation was born the documentary project, which wishes to oppose the dictatorship of steel with the tools of the imaginary; Meeting the maestro Carrino in Rome gave us access to his archive: in one of his performances (Costruttivi Trasformabili, Forum Kunst Rottweil, Germany, 1973, 16mm) Carrino raises a wall made of steel modules; in agreement with the maestro, this and other performative interventions of his are reread and inserted into the documentary. Years later Carrino was the author of the architectural redevelopment of Piazza Fontana (established at the wish of Charles V), the square that anticipates and introduces the visitor to the old city of Taranto and that becomes the way into Otnarat: a city of the imaginary, of collective action and of the return to hope in another possible Taranto. In this time of the inverse future, the present is handed back to the people of Taranto, and Palazzo Ulmo in via Duomo (a historic abandoned building in the heart of the old city) becomes the device from which Matteo Fraterno (relational artist from Naples), Lorenzo Romito (urban art laboratory Stalker/ON), Giorgio de Finis (director of the Casa dell’Architettura in Rome) and Ilmotorediricerca (multidisciplinary collective) intercept the needs and urgencies of the territory, thus developing the structure of the film. Directed by: Nico Angiuli Screenplay: Nico Angiuli, Roberto dell’Orco, Michele Loiacono With: Nicola Carrino, Matteo Fraterno, Lorenzo Romito, Angelo Losasso, Aldo Scatigna, Francesco Dracca Editing: Stefano Muti Sound: Mauro Boccuni Music: Angelo Losasso, Francesco Dracca, Aldo Scatigna Graphic design: Roberto dell’Orco, PiaLivia Di Tardo Production: In Iride Sfoggio srl Memory project: Apulia Film Commission Images: Roberto dell’Orco.