RITRACCIA [2025]

Dual-channel digital video | 00:10:51 | Colour / Black-&-white | Stereo | 32:9

Co-created with Cathy Lee Crane​

 

VIEW:

​

RITRACCIA (retrace) is inspired by the spectre of Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. Two discrete single-channel works are presented together as a dual-screen work.

 

Cathy Lee Crane’s Adrift [right screen] follows a woman who has come to Rome to die. On her journey through the city, she encounters a young girl who taunts her with visions of lost innocence. This film follows the protagonist as she retraces and redraws a new trajectory through the locations of Pasolini’s films.

 

John Di Stefano’s Murmurations (Rome) [left screen] retraces paths at two historical sites in Rome, reanimating their political and ideological significance: the Foro Italico, an example of Italian Fascist architecture; and the Fosse Ardeatine, a Roman catacomb where, during World War II, 330 Italian civilians were massacred by German occupation troops as a reprisal for a partisan attack.
 

The work is narrated by Pasolini who reads excerpts from his poem, The Ashes of Gramsci (1957).

.

SHOWN

Pasolini: Durations, Casa Italiana - Zerilli-Marimò, New York University, New York, US (2025)  

​

John DI STEFANO is an artist/filmmaker, writer and curator. His work focuses on reconciling the personal with the social, the everyday with history often using documentary, archival and found footage. His work also often deals with his own immigrant past seen through a queer lens. His award winning work has been screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Festival International du Documentaire de Marseille, Anthology Film Archives, Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Transmediale, and the Kassel Documentary Film Festival. His work has also been featured at the Videonale (Kunstmuseum, Bonn), Barcelona Museum of Modern Art, Para/Site Art Space (Hong Kong), Hammer Museum (Los Angeles) and at the European Media Arts Festival. He currently teaches at Concordia University (Montreal).

​

Cathy Lee CRANE is an experimental filmmaker and producer whose work mines the historical archive to produce lyrical films of speculative history. Her film work has appeared at the National Gallery of Art (Washington), and screened at the Viennale, San Francisco International Film Festival, Festival du Nouveau Cinema, Cinematheque Francais, BFI, and Arsenal/Berlin, and are distributed by Canyon Cinema, Lightcone, and Films Media Group. She was a Guggenheim Fellow (2013), Residency Fellow (2020) at the Harun Farocki Institut, and is Associate Professor at Ithaca College (New York).