POSITANO (France, 1968, Pierre Clémenti)
/Nude figures embrace and frolic on the rocky shore of the Amalfi coast in POSITANO… like a recurring dream or parallel universe that exists eternally, alongside the action of Clémenti’s life. —Hyperallergic
Positano is an island of the Amalfi Coast that Neptune would have, according to legend, created for the love of a nymph. Not unlike Neptune, Pierre Clémenti’s POSITANO embodies a total love in which family and friends are seized in the same poetic field.
Perched on the rocks of the island, the house of Frédéric Pardo and Tina Aumont became, in 1968, a meeting place for the French “undeground.” Clémenti lived in Pardo and Aumont’s house for some time and, in POSITANO, created images of dazzling sensuality.
Beyond Clémenti's infatuation with the faces and bodies he captures, often naked, in the Mediterranean landscape, the film reveals the beauty of a utopia where communal living and creativity was achieved at the height of the late 1960s counterculture.
In NIGHT WIND — a fictional film made decades after POSITANO — avant-garde luminary Philippe Garrel reflects on his real-life experiences in Positano alongside Clémenti and their circle of artist friends. Glimpses of Nico writing poetry in a quiet courtyard, Frédéric Pardo rowing in silence, Viva perched atop a rock formation, and Garrel himself playfully evading the camera are seen throughout. These fragments, originally captured in POSITANO, resurface in NIGHT WIND as filmic memories, thereby blurring the lines between cinema, autobiography, and poetic reverie.
POSITANO is part of the DSL collection THE PIERRE CLÉMENTI COLLECTION.
POSITANO
(France, 1968)
Director: Pierre Clémenti
- 24 minutes
- 16mm
- Color
- Silent
Distribution Format/s: DSL/Downloadable 1080p .mp4 file on server
Published By: Balthazar Clémenti
Institutional Price: $250
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