Zolfo Rosso
Zolfo Rosso is a multi-media research project by Nicola Baratto & Yiannis Mouravas juxtaposing the languages of experimental film and sculpture, to make a world that re-imagines a fragment of the Mediterranean past.
My role was that of cinematographer alongside Daphné Hérétakis. Daphné mainly shot on 16mm whilst I shot the digital image.
The project is inspired by the ‘making-of’ a map of the known world, created in 12th century Sicily by geographer Muhammad al- Idrisi, and commissioned by Norman King of Sicily Roger II.
This map curiously represents the world with the South at the top and is famously known as ‘Kitab nuzhat al-mushtaq fı ikhtiraq al-afaq’ (The pleasure of the one who longs to cross the horizons), or Latinised ‘Tabula Rogeriana’ (Book or Roger). Inspired by this medieval distortion of perspective, and rooted in a syncretic Mediterranean tradition, the film and installation explore the exchange that took place between Mediterranean civilisations in the early Middle Ages.
- Written and directed: by Nicola Baratto & Yiannis Mouravas
- Featuring: Chadli Aloui, Francesco Surdi, Maziar Firouzi, Amiel Giusti Pastore, Chokri Ezzina
- Original Soundtrack by: Francesco G. Gagliardi, Stefano K. Testa, Marijn Degenaar
- DOP: Daphné Hérétakis, Marijn Degenaar
- Costume: design Nonoleni
- Produced: by Baratto & Mouravas, Landescape