“The World of Gilbert & George”: the seminal work by the two major contemporary artists

Gilbert & George touch down at the 11^th Rome Film Fest, with an onstage conversation and the presentation of The World of Gilbert & George (1981, 69’), which they wrote, directed and starred in. This is the only feature-length film by the two artists and was made in the era of Arte Povera and Conceptualism. The film launched a revolutionary visual language for film, with the geometrical lines of the Union Jack, the colourful flowers, the skies of London and the city’s Victorian architecture. Plus the physical figures, the street culture, the homeless; the outsized emotions and gestures: it all goes into a love letter for London, seen as the human condition.
A film thought lost, then rediscovered and finally restored by the Cineteca Nazionale, in collaboration with Milestone Film & Video, The World of Gilbert & George is a seminal work that anticipated the explosion of Young British Art by a decade, along with London’s metamorphosis into the capital of the contemporary visual culture. The event is curated by Mario Codognato and Alessandra Mammì.
Gilbert & George at the Rome Film Fest (badge-holders and public)
– Monday, October 17^th at 7:30 pm, at the MAXXI: screening of The World of Gilbert & George
– Tuesday, October 18^th at 4 p.m., in the Sala Petrassi (free admission): a talk with Gilbert & George, followed by a screening of The World of Gilbert & George
– Tuesday, October 18^th at 9 p.m., at the Casa del Cinema: Gilbert & George introduce the film Shaolin Martial Arts by Chang Cheh