Balletti Meccanici Festival at Labirinto della Masone

The Balletti Meccanici festival, curated by Michele Belmessieri, runs from August 2 to 31, 2019, at the Labirinto della Masone near Parma, Italy—the world's largest labyrinth. The program celebrates cinema as collective creation, blending film, music, photography, and literature. It opens with a performance by Mokadelic, the Roman band known for scoring Gomorrah, and closes with live soundtracks for Japanese animations. Screenings include Bernardo Bertolucci's La strategia del ragno and Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract. Earthset performs live music for André Deed's silent film L'uomo meccanico. C+C=Maxigross presents an album inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, a friend of labyrinth creator Franco Maria Ricci. Ricci, who conceived the labyrinth as a hospitable space, delegates programming to younger collaborators. The festival title references Fernand Léger's Ballet mécanique, a collaborative film involving Man Ray, George Antheil, and Ezra Pound. Events also include a video about Ricci and a film on painter Ligabue, to whom Ricci dedicated a book and exhibition.