Perdere il filo

Jonathan Nossiter provides us with a lively, fresh and personal portrait of the artist Lorenzo Pezzatini. For 20 years, Pezzatini has focused on just one single motif, namely the ‘filo’, or the thread. He has used this motif in several ways in photos, advertising boardings, paintings, sculptures and as a thread itself: thick layers of paint in primary colours on a cord. You could say that he is obsessed with this motif. Even Pezzatini’s wife Caterina cannot get away from it: the house has virtually turned into a kind of ‘filo’-museum. Nossiter follows the artist for three days in his work, for instance in the streets of Florence and Prato, where he uses the thread to cheer up the ‘couleur locale’. In addition, the film poses questions, subtly and en passant, about the life of an artist, the public function of art. art policy, art criticism, tourism and several otter issues. Jonathan Nossiter is painter, maker of short films and features including Resident Alien (1992), Sunday (1997) and Signs & Wonders (2000).