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july 27, 2021 - In Between Art Film

Cinema galleggiante - Acque sconosciute Floating Cinema - Unknown Waters Rethinking the city from the perspective of the lagoon 2nd Edition


Over the course of 12 evenings from 20th August to 4th September 2021, Floating Cinema - Unknown Waters returns, an open-air cinema festival that takes place exclusively on the waters of the Venetian Lagoon, an opportunity for various local and international cultural organisations that operate in the city to come together and create something collectively.

The Floating Cinema - Unknown Waters is a project conceived by Edoardo Aruta and Paolo Rosso presented by Microclima, in collaboration with Ocean Space / TBA21 − Academy, Pentagram Stiftung, Palazzo Grassi - Punta della Dogana - Pinault Col- lection, In Between Art #film Foundation and Lamyland - Owenscorp.

The event consists of a series of screenings, performances and presentations on a floating platform located in the middle of the lagoon, in the shallows behind the Giudecca island, located close to the Rio de Sant’Eufemia. Spectators will be able to watch the programming from both their own boats, and from a barge designed to accommodate members of the public without a boat, in com- pliance with the current social distancing rules.

Floating Cinema - Unknown Waters came about from the desire to develop cultural activities and ways of coming together through new forms of dialogue and participation. In this process of reimagination, Venice, archetype of a city in which the fragile relationship between human beings and the environment is ever-present, can act as a catalyst for experimentation and new ideas, which may start locally, but have the potential to create global ripples.

The theme of the second edition of the festival is travel. Travel embodies not only the exploration of distant lands, the depths of the sea, outer space and time itself, but also the exploration of the relationships between cultures, a way of accessing and comparing them with one another. Venice has always been a crossroads of stories and cultures, a place of arrivals and departures, but it is also regularly challenged by overtourism, lending itself to hosting a reflection on new forms of mobility and cohabitation.

The ideas of instability, the unexpected, resistance, technological solutions, and water’s potential for creating routes for both transport and communication relate to the notion of travel as a physical, emotional and imaginative movement, and also inform the core concepts at the heart of Unknown Waters. Over the course of 12 evenings, local and international directors and artists, will come together in an amphibious setting.

Partner institutions and local and international organisations have been asked to contribute to the programming with a selection of feature films, short films, art films, performances and presentations.

In addition to collaborating with our five partner institutions, Cinema Galleggiante has also benefitted from contributions by numerous institutions. The organisations that have returned to participate in the 2021 edition are: About, ALMA ZEVI, Awai, Casa Capra, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, DH Office, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Museo Fortuny - Fondazione Musei Civici di #venezia, Galleria Michela Rizzo, Iuav University of Venice, and Spazio Punch.

Some of the Italian organisations participating for the first time this year are: a.topos, bruno, Centro Studi e Documentazione della Cultura Armena, EMERGENCY ONG ONLUS, Festival delle Arti Giudecca e Sacca Fisola, Fondazione Giancarlo Ligabue, Humboldt Books, il Provvisorio - Centro Civico Zitelle, Lago #film Fest, Rete Cinema in Laguna, Libreria MarcoPolo, Libreria Mare di Carta, OCIO - Osservatorio Civico per la casa e la residenzialità, RI-PRESE memory keepers, Science Gallery Venice, Spiazzi, Università degli Studi di Udine.

Our international contributors include: Air de Paris, Art for the world, Arthub, Kunsthalle Zürich, The Museum of Modern Art - MoMA, redhero-Bodhi Dharma Foundation and The Brooklyn Rail.

Our catering service will be curated by TOCIA! cuisine and community, an interdisciplinary platform founded by chef Marco Bravetti, who, in dialogue with the themes around which each evening will be based, will be involving other chefs who work in the lagoon area to realise an experiment in collective, community-based cooking, dedicated to sustainability.

Floating Cinema - Unknown Waters is part of 1600 #venezia / 421-2021, a series of events that celebrate the 1600th anniversary of Venice.

The Floating Cinema is also supported by ALMA ZEVI, DH Office and Fondazione Giancarlo Ligabue.