Gabriele Salvatores will bring Italian beauty to Expo Dubai 2020 through a story of the territories of the Italian Regions. The Oscar-winning director was selected by a jury chaired by writer Sandro Veronesi in a digital press conference on the platform of the Foreign Press in Italy. In line with the title of the Italian Pavilion “The beauty that unites people”, Gabriele Salvatores will glance across the Regions that have joined the project, shooting a film that will be edited to be finally screened to the visitors from over the world for the entire 6-month duration of the Universal Exposition.
“The portrait of a Country bridging the Mediterranean and that has always favoured the encounter between cultures. The Expo’s effort is not to make a documentary of the situation we are now living but actually the opposite: the way we were and the way we want to go back to being, giving an image of Italy in the pursuit of beauty, with all its differences” explained Gabriele Salvatores in an interview for Corriere Della Sera.
The director, together with Indiana Production, will look at our Country on two floors: in the Pavilion’s first hall there will be the work of man, his know-how; the second hall will host the landscapes. The story will be told in fragments and visitors will see in a loop and also in streaming from the ad hoc portal.
Salvatores will not only focus on Italian landscapes, but will also work on people’s smiles, faces, hands, using black and white images in some shots and taking inspiration from a book by Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado. At the beginning of the journey, visitors will bask in the beauty of the landscape along the exhibition’s itinerary then continue on to narrative architectures made up of contents that best express Italy’s competence and beauty.
Cinema, theater, cutting-edge technologies, innovative businesses and sustainability: all of this will be placed at the center of attention by director Salvatores.
After a circular scenic window with a 360° view of Italy’s most beautiful landscapes – which marks the importance of protecting and taking care of the priceless heritage Italy represents for the whole world – the storytelling will continue on Italy’s ‘Know-How’ to be shown on a 100sqmt screen and portraying the best of Italy’s handicrafts, agrifood, machinery, design and the implementation of the most advanced technologies. The narrative will the feature ‘Short Stories’, temporary exhibitions with a thematic focus on our country’s culture and art as well as contemporary innovations in fields such as health, medicine, space and design.
“The Italian beauty that Gabriele Salvatores will masterfully describe is the beauty that is based on the diversity of its territories and its knowledge: so our Regions will be, for the first time in a Universal Exposition, artistic partners of the Italian Pavilion, realizing its contents for the entire period of the Expo”, said Paolo Glisenti, General Commissioner for Italy’s participation in Expo 2020 Dubai.
