Storie Milanesi
_Fondazione Adolfo Pini

A documentary that sketches an intimate portrait of Alessandro Manzoni, the person hidden behind the myth, using a part of the relationship between the writer, his wife Teresa Stampa and his godson Stefano.

In this documentary, the main purpose is to tell, through an innocent gaze, the figure of Ernesto Treccani, and his humble and creative being. With the eyes of a dear solidarity, the artist has always viewed a reality made up of environments made of faces and colors. "I will paint as long as I live my city, the city that dies and the city that is born, the deserted balconies and smokeless factories and, when I am able, directly the men in the landscape and the chimneys that throw smoke". In the pages of "Art for love", Ernesto Treccani talks about Milan, giving an expression to the strong bond he has with his city. Starting from this feeling, we followed the artist's approach to the Milanese urban setting and what animates it.

With slow camera movements, we move in the rooms of Renzo's house. Adolfo, through the narrator, speaks of the Milan of his time, of the ferments of the war, of a “Corso Garibaldi” full of life, of those empty rooms and Renzo, of his silences, of his detachment, of his art. The tracking lenses seem to follow an Adolfo who, invisibly, looks around and remembers.

While visiting the Achille Castiglioni Foundation, one cannot help but to perceive his presence, his gaze, in every room and every object. This documentary represents this sensation through a curious young visitor’s eyes, who plays with lights and explores the spaces. As child who lets himself be carried away by Castiglioni's irony.

Camilla is a ghost from the past. Awakened at the entrance of today's museum, she wanders around its rooms, not recognizing the places from her childhood. Only at the end, she will understand that the mysterious place is her birthplace, as the figure of her father will return to present himself in the historic family study.

In via de Amicis 17, in the former convent of S. Maria della Vittoria, hidden by the city walls, lies the labyrinth of works by Alik Cavaliere, a man who tried to hide all the tiny facets of the human being in his sculptures. His works, created by shaping any type of material, are born from ground earth and take on infinite forms. In his laboratory, far from the conventional, one can witness the construction of a single large work consisting of a myriad of minor works.

"The light, high above my head, seemed to be there to pass through it all, through all the space, to the most distant boundaries of my imagination - a nothing that for me was the infinity. Instead, right there on that poor wall, that light had to give up the endless journey. It had to be reduced to the concrete. It had to rain down, that light, and take shape - forced to illuminate its own dazzling disaster of actual things. For me, for a dozen spectators and loners sitting in that areopagus of overturned wooden seats. Sometimes I thought: "If the wall would fall, where would the whole film go?". (from «La lunga notte», Emilio Tadini).

Magistretti, an architect, a designer, a man. “Idea” tells the person behind the professional, highlighting his thoughts on work and creativity. In an encounter between past and present, a young designer collects the legacy that Vico leaves in the allegory of a chair, a simulacrum of all ideas; this idea follows a path passing through his architecture and his design products, in which he continues to live, immersed, his city that he loved so much, Milan, until he reaches his old studio in via del Conservatorio. The idea has reached the end of its journey, transforming itself from a primitive shade to the final product.

A project consists of three informative videos, which aim at the rediscovery of the figure of Franco Albini through his work and his relationship with the city of Milan.

Wrinkled, doubtful hands touch a large white sheet of paper. Birds chirp outside. It is early morning. Lalla gets up slowly from her chair and turns to the window. Lalla extends her arm; far away, in the distance, a cherry tree in bloom. Lalla closes her eyes. The cherry tree is green and full of unripe fruits. The woman opens her eyes. She runs her hands over her face, presses her fingers to her eyes. She turns and sits down again. She takes the pen and places it on the sheet: they become canvas and brush. Lalla draws.

There has always been a before and an after for you, Mario. No middle lands, no compromises, ambiguous areas. A clean cut: before, after. There is your life as a boy, as a student of Manzoni High School, who molded the clay secretly at the gymnasium, as a game, as an unconscious internship, as a yearning. And there are the deaths of your father and mother, in even less than two years, in the middle of adolescence. Last of four children you followed the advice of your brother Bruno. No clay. You enrolled in the faculty of architecture. "It was necessary for me to give to my brother the certainty of a choice, that would guarantee a future and a job", you said. Concrete, ready to sacrifice. You were from the valley, born...

You are not born Milanese, you decide to become it. You had understood it, definitively, that winter evening, immersed in the city fog, when the haze was still an essential part of the urban landscape. Beyond the Bastioni, Milano was a continuous forest, a carpet of orchards. A nursery, as suggested by the name of the street - Strada del Vivaio - where the plants of the Milanese were cultivated and sold. The walls of the Bastioni had become narrow for the historic city. Modernity was pressing, looking for space. The axes of Corso Venezia and Corso Monforte, a century earlier, had begun to be enriched with noble palaces: Serbelloni, Cicogna, Diotti, Isimbardi. On the boulevards the building curtain was urban, behind instead it was bucolic, even rural. It was...