Suite Europa 11
2009-2011
in collaboration with Andrea Morbio and Daniele Zoico

A suite of archive-based film essays about three athletes:
Frankie Fredericks, Patrick de Gayardon and Nadia Comăneci.


– La scena emisferica, 2009
– État de perfection, 2010
– În forma lucrurilor care trebuie să vină, 2011




* * *

La scena emisferica
[The Hemispherical Stage]
film, 16’, 2009
in collaboration with Daniele Zoico

In 1992, athlete Frankie Fredericks became Namibia’s first Olympic medalist when he finished second in both the 100m and 200m. For the 1996 Summer Olympics, Fredericks was among the title favorites for both the 100m and 200m. He reached both finals, and again finished second in both. In the 100m, he was beaten by Donovan Bailey, who set a new World Record, and in the 200m, he was beaten by Michael Johnson, who also set a new World Record. At the time, Fredericks’s second-place run was the third-fastest 200m in history, beaten only by Johnson.

Suffering from injuries, Fredericks had to withdraw from the 1999 and 2001 World Championships and the 2000 Summer Olympics.
In the 200m final at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, he finished 4th. He was 36. Although Fredericks is considered one of the greatest athletes of the end of the 20th century, he never managed to be Olympic champion.

La scena emisferica narrates the story of Frankie Fredericks, intertwined with VHS images recorded by an Italian tourist during a trip to Namibia. The two stories run parallel, setting a balance between two unsatisfied endeavors.


Voice: Andrea Morbio
Archive footage: Guido D. Giacconi, YouTube
Quotes from: Erwin Piscator, Wilbur Smith, Franz Kafka, Herman Melville, Immanuel Kant, Paolo Conte

Screened at: MACRO - Museo d’arte contemporanea di Roma, Italy; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino, Italy (2013); Loop Festival, Barcelona; Kaunas in Art Festival, Kaunas, Lithuania; Lago Film Festival, Revine Lago, Italy (2011), Casa del Cinema, Venezia (2009).






* * *






În forma lucrurilor care trebuie să vină
[In the Shape of Things to Come]
film, 35’, 2011
in collaboration with Andrea Morbio and Daniele Zoico

When Nadia Comăneci was 14 years old, she became the first athlete to ever obtain a perfect score – a 10 – in an Olympic competition (Montreal 1976). She embodied, for the first time in sports history, the idea of perfection.

In the film, the Romanian gymnast is the catalyst for an analysis of different instances of a perfect image.


Voice and live translation: Alexandra Rădulescu,
Melika Shafahi
Archive footage: Familia Diez Garcia, Rai.
Quotes from: Archilochus, Emil Cioran, Mircea Eliade, Franz Kafka, H.P. Lovecraft, Titus Lucretius Carus, Sappho, Verdena
Music: Gustav Mahler, "Kindertotenlieder"

Screened at: MACRO - Museo d’arte contemporanea di Roma, Italy (2013); Torino Film Festival, Italy (2011).