Presented by Gagosian | Director Andrea Bettinetti | Produced by Michele Bongiorno for Good Day Films

The film is structured as an engaging journey to discover the Arte Povera movement and its protagonists, in a story that extends from 1967 – the year of its birth – to the present day.

The story narrates how this radically subversive and innovative art movement in respect to the panorama of the time has profoundly influenced the development of contemporary art in Italy and abroad.

A journey through the studios and foundations of the artists, the galleries and museums that host the most important collections in the world, to narrate the birth of a movement that today is more relevant than ever because of its values and poetics.

From the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art to the prestigious collection of the Olgiati Foundation in Lugano Switzerland, from Magazzino Art in New York – a temple of Arte Povera in the USA – to the Gallery of Modern Art in Turin, from the Giardini della Venaria with the works of Giuseppe Penone, to Pistoletto’s Cittadellarte, from Giulio Paolini’s studio to the Merz Foundation, from Lia Rumma’s Gallery to Tucci Russo’s Gallery, from Sargentini’s Attico in Rome to the Calzolari Foundation in Fossombrone… and many other places, the documentary unfolds in a long journey where the images of the works mix with the spaces that host them and with the original photos and films of the time, in a continuous reference between past and present.

All accompanied by a continuous, fascinating and thoughtful conversation, with the protagonists of the most interesting and internationally recognized Italian artistic research of the post-war period, who talk about the past from the present to turn to the future.

Protagonists are the artists who were part of the movement, the gallery owners who curated the exhibitions, the photographers who immortalized their works, the family members who shared their lives. Interpersonal relationships, the atmospheres of the time, the desire to open new horizons, continuous research in making art, galleries as places of meeting and discussion, are just some of the contents that are addressed in the film, in a direct and lively way.

But also the pride of having been part of a free artistic movement, which has always operated within and outside its own time and which still today possesses a disruptive force and an influence that goes beyond national borders.

Director Andrea Bettinetti

Produced by Michele Bongiorno for Good Day Films