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.

Shana Moulton’s The Sentimental Futurist was inspired by the Vita Futurista segment of the same name.

In her video performances Shana Moulton probes, with humour, the interplay of a popular culture shaped by consumption and commercialised New Age philosophies and an “elite” culture, exemplified in the spirit of Mondrian, and the late works of George O’Keefe created in New Mexico. She has exhibited and performed internationally, including solo shows at Art in General and Broadway 1602 in New York and the Migros Museum in Zurich.

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