ICA Head Of Cinema & FRAMES of REPRESENTATION Founder Nico Marzano’s Lockdown Film Guide

Nico Marzano heads the film programme and distribution arm at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (ICA), foregrounding under-represented independent and experimental films to diverse audiences. Marzano is also the founder of FRAMES of REPRESENTATION (FoR), a laboratory conceived in 2015 to engage with new visions of cinema through supporting exhibition, production and distribution of innovative and politically aware cinematic languages. While we remain largely housebound, Marzano shares with Something Curated his horizon-broadening quarantine film guide. He tells SC, “These are some of the films that strongly marked my initial film education during my teenage years. This quarantine, if anything else, is a good opportunity to motivate us to (re)discover certain film landmarks.”

Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943 || Maya Deren (14 mins)

“Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid’s experimental investigation of deeply personal psychology uses repetitive structures and iconic imagery to construct a hallucinatory narrative that delves into the intimate subjectivity of its characters. Meshes of the Afternoon is one of the key films which influenced (and still influence) generations of artists and filmmakers,” Marzano says.

Los Olvidados, 1950 || Luis Buñuel (77 mins)

“Buñuel forges a powerful blend of social realism and surrealism. Los Olvidados, which earned Buñuel his very first award at the Cannes Film Festival, explores the ties between poverty and crime with great honesty.”

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, 1970 || Elio Petri (115 mins)

Marzano expands, “A biting critique of Italian police methods and authoritarian repression, Petri creates a psychological and multilayered study of a budding crypto-fascist. With an eternal Gian Maria Volonté in the role of the police inspector, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion won the Oscar as best foreign-language film in 1971.”

Dekalog: One, 1988 || Krzysztof Kieślowski (57 mins)

“Originally made for Polish television, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s acclaimed Dekalog is a ten-part series in which each episode offers a contemporary dramatic meditation on one of the Ten Commandments. In Dekalog 1,faith and reason, although apparently in conflict, are nothing more than different aspects of the human need to dominate life and to find answers to the unknown,” the ICA Cinema curator explains.

La Ciénaga, 2001 || Lucrecia Martel (103 mins)

“A Chekhovian tragi-comedy, La Ciénaga is a matchless exercise in claustrophobia as it captures the temperature and texture of provincial life in the high plains of north-west Argentina. Martel’s first feature, La Ciénaga revealedto the world the emergence of one of the most remarkable contemporary Latin American filmmakers.”



Feature image: Los Olvidados, 1950, Luis Buñuel (via Pinterest)