Venice Film Festival Tunes Into Sustainability, AI
MILAN — A few days after the presentation of the second Green Carpet Awards, Italia event in Venice, the theme of sustainability will be central once again at the city’s film festival as French-American environmental artist Anne de Carbuccia presents her first documentary “One Ocean” on Tuesday. In the 11-minute film, de Carbuccia points to the impact of climate change, the burning forests in Siberia and the consumption of single-use plastic on the sea.
“The ocean is sacred, or at least that’s what they used to say — I come from Corsica, a mountain in the sea.[…]We all depend on the ocean no matter where we live. The ocean affects our climate, feeds us, cures us, gifts us, helps us breathe and makes us dream,” says de Carbuccia in the film’s trailer. “What I see down there is so dramatic and different from my childhood memories. Documenting it has
become a central part of my work, representing the beauty and sadness of what we are losing. I wander over reefs that are bleached as if ravaged by war.”
An art historian and anthropologist, de Carbuccia has been raising awareness about the destruction of the environment with her striking and bold photos taken in locations ranging from the Kilimanjaro jungles to Antarctica and the Mekong River in Laos, highlighting the erosion of glaciers or the dams that threaten the river’s ecology. She draws inspiration from 16th- and 17th-century vanitas art and meticulously creates installations of “time shrines” reminiscent of still-life paintings of that period, which generally featured a skull and an hourglass.
“My art and resolve is for the next generation. For them I will illuminate the damage, transcend the breakage, bridge the disconnection,” says de Carbuccia, urging to “stop putting us and our inventions above the natural world but rather transform them into a part of it.” With music by Italian artist Ludovico Einaudi, the film is produced by Art + Vibes and FilmMaster Productions.
De Carbuccia has established the “One Planet One Future” installations of her work, and the TimeShrine Foundation, through which proceeds from her work are donated to support causes related to the subjects in her photos.
Separately, Salma Hayek, who received the second Franca Sozzani Award last Friday, the following day presented her latest film “Yugen,” a project created by film director, writer and artist Martha Fiennes and produced by asset management firm Tendercapital.
Exploring a new medium, Fiennes combined intricate coded algorithms to create moving images, which perpetually self-generate in a continuous and non-predictable cycle, combining artificial intelligence and pictorial art. Hayek is at the center of the movie as Fiennes’ muse, and there is no fixed narrative or prescribed length, as the viewer chooses how long they wish to spend on it.
“I have always been drawn to the idea of extended levels of consciousness — whether reflected in the imagination, in dreams, archetypes, psychoactive, plant medicines, out-of-body experience, near-death experiences or in the vast reservoir of human creative expression that has preceded us,” Fiennes explained. “Salma is both the muse and source of inspiration, capable of effortlessly entering the character. She works with superlative expertise, instinct, creativity…and sense of humor.”
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