The four episodes of the “Contemporary Italy” short series, including the Metropoli, Open Air, Old and New, and Off Road, will be screened on channel VTV2 on Monday 6, Tuesday 7, Wednesday 8 and Thursday 9 of December at 11am and will be accessible on smartphones and tablets via the VTV Go app. 

The banner of the program. Photo courtesy of Italia Embassy in Vietnam

Introduced by the Embassy of Italy to Vietnam on the occasion of 17th Italian Contemporary Day, the short film series is dedicated to show the landmarks of contemporary art in Italy.

Italy is home to many museums and exhibition spaces of great beauty and innovation hosting works of artists from all over the world. Through this initiative with VTV, the Embassy of Italy aims at sharing with the Vietnamese public the Italian approach to contemporary art, which is universal and open to exchanges with other cultures and creative visions.

The film screening program is a part of the campaign “Italy is simply extraordinary: beIT” launched by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the agencies of International Cooperation and the Italian Trade in 26 countries, including Vietnam.

The campaign aims to relaunch Italy’s global image, attract resources and investments, and strengthen exports and tourism.

The Italian Contemporary art refers to painting and sculpture in Italy from the early 20th century onwards, with special focus on Futurism.

The founder and most influential personality of Futurism was the Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who launched the movement in his Futurist Manifesto in 1909.

The Futurists expressed a loathing of everything old, especially political and artistic tradition. They admired speed, technology, youth and violence, the car, the airplane and the industrial city, all that represented the technological triumph of humanity over nature, and they were passionate nationalists

The leading painters of the movement in Italia were Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Giacomo Balla and Gino Severini. They advocated a “universal dynamism,” which was to be directly represented in their paintings.