In 1916 the Italian Futurist artist Arnaldo Ginna filmed, edited and generally oversaw the creation of Vita Futurista (Futurist Life), the only officially “Futurist” film ever made. Created by a committee of futurists, including sculptor, painter and writer Giacomo Balla, playwright and poet Remo Chiti, writer Bruno Corra (also the brother of Ginna, and the co-creator of Ginna’s hand painted completely abstract films of 1909), founder of Futurism, poet, and declaimer F.T. Marinetti, poet and Author Emilio Settimelli, painter and Ginna’s film assistant Lucia Venna and Paolo Ungari, Vita Futurista directly took up several of the ideas proposed by “The Futurist Cinema” manefesto, which delacred that film was the “expressive medium most adapted to the complete sensibility of the Futurist artist.”

On the occasion of Performa 09’s celebration of Futurism, Performa, SFMOMA and Portland Green Cultural Projects had invited an incredible group of contemporary film and video artists to create their own versions of the original segments in Vita Futurista, re-imagining this film in relation to our future.

Matthew Silver and Shoval Zohar (The Future)’s The Path to Enlightenment was inspired by “The Dance of Geometric Splendor”.

Mathew Silver is a filmmaker, performing artist and clown. His works are usually inspired by situations that are happening to him now. He likes to blur the lines between reality and fiction through performance and film. Currently he has become The Man In White Dress, a modern day false profit (www.maninwhitedress.com). For Futurist Life Redux, Silver has collaborated with Shoval Zohar a filmmaker, writer and performer. In her work the cheapness of digital world and its sex appeal are brought together with the pure magic of nostalgia and collective memory. Zohar and Silver’s ongoing collaboration is known as The Future.

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