Il libro d’ore (The book of hours)

I have always been interested in the theme of the passage of time, in the hidden permanence of its layers, and in the different ways time is made visible: the passage from day to night, the instruments invented to measure time’s passage, the aging and decaying of matter, memory and oblivion. Books of hours structured time according to the moments of prayer, and referred to both the natural, cyclical rhythm of seasons and to the religious division of time. Both these patterns are considered obsolete nowadays. Yet there are still traces of them, which sometimes appear, striking us like sudden messages from another world, still present, hidden somewhere under our feet or above our heads. ‘’If all time is eternally present | All time is unredeemable.’’ A city is composed of strata of time, and it moves following a rhythm of its own. It’s a brutal microcosm, an organism which moves autonomously like the gear of a clock. Changes happen imperceptibly, we noticed them mostly too late. Traces of violence are quickly hidden away. A certain degree of distraction is necessary to survive surrounded by death. Filming, to remember and to forget.