HNIFF 2025
The Imagination of a Child
Directed by Cesare Catania · Italy · 15 min · short · documentary
The movie, mainly in black and white, completely without dialogue and interspersed with moments of reflection for the viewer in front of the written thoughts of the "narrator", analyzes the psychological evolution of an artist who develops ideas and beliefs linked to the world of art. The story of the movie, conceived by the artist and director as a “democratic work of art”, takes place in the current present, in particular in the cities of Milan and Venice (the latter in particular the key city of the film). It tells of two lives, that of an Italian sculptor and that of a little girl, originally from Sri Lanka, who lives with her family in Italy. Both the lives of the two protagonists are somehow linked by an unbridled artistic passion, and the whole film revolves around the design of a sculpture. This drawing is the main element of the story told, the one that allows the lives of the two protagonists, despite starting from such distant points, to intertwine at the end in a "disruptive encounter between two opposites". At the end of the short, in fact, it is revealed that in reality the whole film was nothing more than the artist's dream and that the two protagonists were none other than the same person. The Italian artist therefore identifies himself with the black girl. The Caucasian artist and the black girl are the same person in the film. This choice is singular, linked mainly for the director to overcoming all cultural barriers, in an artistic context of 2024 under the theme "Foreigners Everywhere", title of the Venice Biennale of Art where the sculpture “The Embrace”, protagonist of the short film, is exhibited throughout 2024 as the official artwork of the national pavilion. Furthermore, the main objective of the film is to describe the psychology of an artist through a dream, a dream in which the same person realizes that he must look at the world from two different points of view: as an adult with the eyes of maturity and as a child with the eyes of imagination. The true artist, according to the film, is the one who looks at the world around him with the eyes of an adult and with the imagination of a child; in practice... "a worker of emotions". Cultural Background The short is part of an artistic journey that sees the director of the film as the first creator of works of art with a social background entitled "The Embrace". then founder of the movement called "Embrace Project", an artistic project with a socio-cultural matrix that tends to do good in an ethical way through art. Through the Embrace Project, art is no longer the end aimed at by the artist but the means through which to spread a message of peace and equality. For the "Embrace Project", the artist Cesare Catania, director and creator of the film "The Imagination of a Child", is nominated Unique Ambassador in the World for National Hugging Day in 2023. This path leads the artist to write the first Manifesto of Democratic Art of History at the beginning of 2024 and to create, again in 2024, the artistic short film with a documentary background entitled "The Imagination of a Child", a short that enhances the relationship between the artist and his art through the eyes of a child, a short documentary that revolves around the sculpture entitled "The Embrace" created in 2023 and exhibited at the Venice Art Biennale in 2024 as a work of art official of a national pavilion. The complete explanation of the project in the video interview below: https://youtu.be/eh04rBtcCoQ
This film's screening window has ended.
From the director
« It took me several years to write my first statement, not because I had nothing to say about my thoughts and my philosophy, but because perhaps the latter did not have the roots and convictions that it now seems to show me.
Now, from the moment I decided to follow that vocation, I immediately turned my attention to an introspective path. My first works “as a professional artist” (at least that’s how I consider them) were mainly dictated by restlessness and intolerance, by my need to talk to myself before the outside world.
Let’s start from the beginning…. I realized since I was a child that I loved art, in all its expressive forms. The decision to be an artist therefore does not derive from a choice referring to a “profession” but rather from the choice whether or not to manifest my true state of being to the world… and yes, because “being an artist” after all it does not mean anything. The artist does not decide to be sensitive and creative. The artist is born sensitive and creative. The artist decides at a certain point in his life to cultivate an innate passion: that of getting excited, of metabolizing these emotions, of expressing them on a canvas or on the shapeless matter in front of him, of feeling shy in front of his unfinished work, of modifying himself while he creates and models, to feel satisfied at the moment of completing his own “creature”. For me this means “making art”, both in the physical and digital fields. »
The view of the Outside World « After this period, I began to deal with the outside world in a more serene way. And it was then that I decided to represent the world around me and the life scenes that surrounded me with contemporary works of art related to everyday life. This evolutionary process was also accompanied by an expressive synthesis, which translated my art from abstract/conceptual art to informal and cubist art. In this process, sometimes accompanied by parentheses of hyperrealism and surrealism, the love for mathematics and geometry led me to synthesize the world around me through the composition of simple polygons, a need that I still carry with me both in the pictorial component than in the sculptural one. »
Harlequin in the Land of Giants is contemporary art painting made oil on canvas by the italian artist, painter and sculptor Cesare Catania Conscious introspection « Subsequently I once again felt the need to return to the path of introspection, but this time with a greater awareness, with the feeling of being able to look inside myself again, however equipped with a superior artistic baggage compared to the first years of “artistic immaturity”. Of course, I’m always looking for new forms of expression, so I would say that I still consider myself “immature” but, given how I am, I will probably consider myself that way forever… »
Art as a "means" rather than an "end" « However, there was a moment when I realized that the art I produced was no longer just aimed at itself. When I started painting the ultimate goal of my artistic production was the art itself that I produced. I like to look for chromatic and aesthetic harmony in the paintings and sculptures I created and I was exclusively concerned that this artistic expression was the complete manifestation of my “deepest self”. At a certain point, however, I began to worry not only that the work created had its own balance in space and time but I began to give more importance to the message it conveyed. For me, art began to no longer become the ultimate goal of my attention but rather the means through which to transmit messages of positivity. Hence the firm belief that the artist has a higher task than simply that of painting and sculpting. The artist has the task of communicating. »
