Odeon VR – Sensing Dolce Vita: An Experiment in VR Storytelling
Eleonora Roaro
This 8-minute virtual reality experience shows the former Odeon cinema (1936-2002) in Udine as it was in 1939, a few years after its opening, during the premiere of the animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The evocative and sensorial reconstruction of the cinema theatre, realised from archival materials and oral testimonies, is a case study that highlights the potentialities that immersive media have in the preservation and valorisation of cinema heritage. In 2004, the Odeon cinema was declared of historical-artistic interest due to the prestige of its decorations by Ugo Rossi and Antonio Franzolini, and its architectural design by Ettore Gilberti. The building still exists today, though its condition is deteriorating; the project aims to raise awareness of this cinema’s uniqueness to the local community, highlighting its importance for the citizens as a place of social gathering. Odeon VR is an experiment in retro-spectatorship that evokes a historically-situated form of spectatorship: the user wears the head-mounted display and becomes the protagonist of a narration set in a specific historical moment, in this case during fascism in Northern Italy.
Garibaldi 99
Developed during a residency at Milan’s Casa degli Artisti, the Garibaldi 99 project focuses on archival materials and oral sources related to the cinema theatre situated in Corso Garibaldi 99 – a few metres from the residency’s location. The cinema was known under several names: as the Garibaldi Cinema (1906-1962), the Paris Cinema (1964-1989) and as Multisala Brera (1994-2008). Functioning as a neighbourhood cinema, it was an important cultural and meeting place for local inhabitants.
An installation aims to link together heterogeneous archival materials with layers of images, projections, sound and videos. A digital collage of a photograph and a blueprint of the cinema from the 60s is projected onto the wall. The sentence “Thus the silent dreams entered in the room” from Carlo Emilio Gadda’s 1931 short-story, Cinema, becomes a luminous trace projected in the room that evokes the primitive experience of movie-going. A story told by a spectator becomes visual material again in the video fregüja, which is related to the presence of a Motta shop and the consumption of sweets during the films. Five parallel podcasts – Piazzale Loreto, Marialuisa, Cinema Garibaldi/Paris/Brera, Fregüja and Gadda – offer insights into the artistic research process. A grey binder contains fragments of related books, archival documents, interview and podcast transcripts, emails, and miscellaneous notes. In this way the research process and the failed attempts are valorised, showing the difficulties of historical investigation and restitution.
CineMi
CineMi is an archival project about cinemas in Milan from 1896 to 1955, with a focus on spectatorship, architecture, and the relationship with the city. The attention is shifted from the movie itself to how the movie theatres influence and determine the experience of the audience, which is always context-dependent. During the 20th century, cinemas in Milan were widespread – whether newly-built or readapted from previous buildings. They had a tangible presence in the urban fabric, especially in the periphery where they represented one of few places for social gathering and cultural promotion. Barring a few exceptions, Milan has completely removed the memory of its former cinemas: the buildings have been destroyed or redeveloped.
The research is conducted using archives and first-hand sources in order to reconstruct and evoke the memory of those places and the social role they played. Among the many archives consulted for this project, particularly important is the Cittadella degli Archivi, which preserves documents such as notary acts, architectural sketches and photos. The Civico Archivio Fotografico provides documents from the beginning of the twentieth century, whereas the Raccolta Bertarelli is a collection of posters, tickets and flyers. The Corriere della Sera archive supplies important data, particularly about the attendance at screenings. Books by Mario Cavallé and Antonio Cassi Rametti provide an insight into movie theatre architecture, offering context to how new technological innovations met the audience’s changing needs. Finally, a series of people were interviewed to collect memories of the places in question, providing a more emotional and personal perspective on movie-going.