A docufilm on Giovanni Boldini is coming soon.

A docufilm on Giovanni Boldini (Ferrara, 1842 - Paris, 1931) is coming soon, premiering on Sunday, June 6 at 9:30 p.m. at the Biografilm Festival in Bologna. The film is titled Giovanni Boldini. The Pleasure. Story of the Artist, is directed and scripted by Manuela Teatini, produced by Trentino Marketing in collaboration with Mart, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, with the patronage of the City of Ferrara, the City of Trento and the City of Rovereto.

The film was created on the occasion of the exhibition Giovanni Boldini. Pleasure curated by Beatrice Avanzi and Tiziano Panconi, which the Mart in Rovereto is dedicating until August 29, 2021, to Giovanni Boldini to celebrate the 90th anniversary of his death. Director Manuela Teatini wanted to recount the salient and iconic moments of the Ferrara painter’s life between Florence, Venice (where he was a member of the sponsoring committee of the first Art Biennale), London, New York, and Paris, but also Monte Carlo, the French Riviera and Sankt Moritz, where he used to vacation: Many were his intellectual acquaintances, including Gabriele D’Annunzio, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Giuseppe Verdi, and again Edgar Degas (with whom he visited Spain and Morocco), Édouard Manet, Alfred Sisley, John Sargent, Marcel Proust, against the backdrop of Paris, where he settled permanently in 1871. During the Belle Époque, Boldini was perhaps the most famous Italian artist in the world, giving rise to a veritable “Boldini mania”: princesses, countesses, actresses and wealthy international travelers would arrive in Paris from all parts of Europe and America just to have their portraits taken by him.

Giovanni Boldini. Pleasure. Story of the Artist wants to celebrate above all the beauty of his muses, of that female universe that was entering the new century with great dreams of freedom and feelings of civil progress, that was rebelling against the pre-established order even if only by choosing to be portrayed in a nonconformist and unbecoming pose. Influential and fascinating women, such as the writer Colette, the soprano Lina Cavalieri, the dancer Cléo de Mérode, American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough, Chilean noblewoman Emiliana Concha de Ossa, Sicilian aristocrat Donna Franca Florio, princesses Marthe-Lucile Bibesco and Eulalia of Bourbon-Spain, Countess Gabrielle de Rasty or the whimsical Marchesa Luisa Casati, whom he met through D’Annunzio and with whom he had a long friendship: her famous portrait with a greyhound, which was an immediate success at the Salon de Paris in 1909, was also a source of inspiration for contemporary fashion designers of the caliber of John Galliano and Alexander Mc Queen.

The docufilm aims to launch the idea that Boldini in some ways anticipated the figure of the trend setter andinfluencer: before he began working on his paintings, in fact, the Ferrara painter used to make sure that his illustrious models wore an outfit that matched his taste, personally accompanying them to Cartier and Boucheron to purchase sumptuous jewelry and accessories and to the ateliers of couturiers such as Paul Poiret, Charles Frederick Worth, Jeanne Lanvin and Jacques Doucet. When he was not busy painting, he could be found at the theater attending performances by Sarah Bernhardt or Eleonora Duse in the company of his great friend, Count Robert de Montesquiou, or handling public relations at the Hotel Ritz, a place of passage for statesmen and aristocrats from all over the world.

The film’s screenplay interweaves the various planes of the narrative to draw a vivid and faithful portrait of the artist, combining never-before-seen images from private archives with footage from the exhibition held at the Mart, footage from the period with specially recreated scenes to bring to life the sophisticated atmosphere and elegant style of the time, thanks in part to the narrating voices of film and theater actors Alessia Patregnani and Francesco Mastrorilli. The documentary includes speeches by Vittorio Sgarbi, art historian and president of the Mart, curators Beatrice Avanzi and Tiziano Panconi, Annalisa Casagranda (Education and Cultural Mediation Area of the Mart), and, as a guest star, Cecilia Matteucci Lavarini, collector and icon of Haute Couture, who recently took part in a video advertisement for Roger Vivier together with Chaterine Deneuve.

“I have always loved Boldini for his ability to transform women on canvas by making them beautiful,” says director Manuela Teatini. “The aspect that fascinated me most was his high regard for the female universe and his passion for his icons: princesses, duchesses, actresses and singers always elegant in Haute Couture dresses. I tried to reproduce his beautiful and fashionable world, working a lot on iconographic research and editing to make the critical account of his extraordinary painting and the Belle Époque period in which women finally emerged as protagonists in the history of Europe as fluid as possible. Boldini, surely, loved women above all for their intelligence, irony, freedom and imagination. I would like to dedicate this documentary to all the very special women I have met.”

Manuela Teatini is a documentary director, screenwriter, producer, and journalist. She is a graduate of the University of Bologna, where she studied Film History and Art History. She has worked as a director and author for RAI Radio Tre, worked for some television programs for RAIUNO and as a director for RAITRE. She has worked as press office for Channel 5, Rete 4 and Italia 1. A freelance journalist, she has written about film and art for various newspapers including Vogue and Elle. She has been editor of international art books including Beat & Pieces. A True Story of the Beat Generation by Fernanda Pivano (Photology, 2005). Among her latest film works: Green Streets. My Neighbour & Other Animals, short film, 2020; Massimo Minini. The Story of a Gallerist, documentary, 2019; Marras Backstage, short film, 2018; Art Backstage. The Passion and the Gaze, documentary, 2017.

The film will soon be available on the MyMovies platform. Those who would instead like to attend the June 6 premiere can reserve tickets on the Biografilm festival website.

Pictured is a detail of the portrait of Countess Gabrielle de Rasty lying down.

A docufilm on Giovanni Boldini is coming soon.

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