Yoko Ono Film Festival Returns to Rome After 22 Years

The Yoko Ono Film Festival, a retrospective of films, short films, and videos by Japanese artist Yoko Ono (born 1933), is being held in Rome as part of the Videocittà festival. Organized by Studio Stefania Miscetti and 2RC Edizioni d’Arte, the festival returns to Rome twenty-two years after its first edition at Palazzo delle Esposizioni, now in an expanded version entirely curated by the artist. The program features a selection of fourteen historical works produced between 1966 and 1982, along with Painting to Shake Hands, ARISING, and Bad Dancer from 2012–2013. A key figure in conceptual art, Ono has built her practice on multidisciplinary expression through music, writing, installations, painting, and drawing since the 1960s. The exhibited works reveal diverse formal solutions and themes: social engagement, autobiographical experiences, political activism, musical performances, and feminism. Her film production, a milestone of American avant-garde cinema, is distinguished by its conceptual radicalism. Central to her work is the body as both object of vision and bearer of the gaze, creating a tension that turns the viewer into an active participant in dialogue with the images and in the construction of the artwork.