Artist Profile

Maurizio
Forcella

Maurizio Forcella was born in Atri.

In 2006 he began his of training in the Image Academy of L’Aquila. Among the teachers stands out the name of Gianni Berengo Gardin, photographer and photojournalist of international renown.

In 2008 he won the audience award at the David di Donatello, in the “Alice Award” section, with his first work as director “The War is Over.”
In 2009 he graduated as “Expert mass-media Cinema and Communication.” After finishing his studies, he started working for some
film productions in Rome as an assistant director.
In 2013 he is a finalist with three photographic works in the competition prize Arte Cairo Editore by exhibiting at the Permanente museum in Milan.
In 2014 he directed his first film work entitled. “As if it were forever,” the latter received particular interest in industry festivals by winning important awards.
In 2017 with the short film “Timballo” he opened an important collaboration with actors such as Maria Grazia Cucinotta, Nunzia Schiano, Ivan Franek and Fabio Balsamo. The work among many awards was chosen by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation as a vehicle of Italian culture in Embassies, Consulates and Italian Cultural Institutes around the world was also was a finalist as best Italian short film at the Nastri D’argento 2018 edition.
In 2019 he shot as director his third work “Quando la mgang passed by” distributed by Premiere Film, this work also has received worldwide recognition.
From 2019 to the present, he has been teaching filmmaking and photography in several schools in Abruzzo thanks to the national image education plan for schools promoted by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry Education and Merit.
In 2022 he made his fourth feature entitled “Mariposa.” released in theaters in 2023 with Pathos Distribution. Distribution. It is already enjoying significant success at industry festivals.
In 2023 he won the Cairo Editore Art Prize photography section with three photographic works.
His first feature film entitled “Antarctica” produced by the production company Stazione Cinema is in the works. It will be shot in 2024.

Last Projects

CLOSED EYES

IMPERFECT PORTRAITS

Do they dream? Do they think? Do they rest? What lies behind the denied gaze, if not not the gaze itself, authentic, alive, questioning? This is the challenge to contemporaneity that three agée women issue through their photographic portraits sublimated in their own imperfection: closed eyes, wrinkled faces. The most deconstructing act of rebellion to the iconography of the selfie is thus accomplished. No winking glances, no camouflaging filters.
Patina versus patina, one subverts the aesthetics of appearance by reappropriating oneself through a sacrilegious gesture: one closes one’s eyes to listen to music, retrace a memory, draw a lost face. Three wrinkled faces tell the truths of an instant and a life. Time reappropriates itself and us: to close our eyes is not to deny ourselves, but to look inside. It is a vertical act that abolishes superficiality. And if it is done by three nice old ladies, it immediately turns into a revolutionary act; into a young and modern gesture made by the young Forcella with the ancient technique of overpainting, retouching par excellence, a selfie filter ante litteram. A filter that does not conceal but ironically highlights, through the alienating use of colors and the presentation of soft, suspended images. This is how the past draws on modernity: there is no “error” in what is true. The arc traced is enclosed in a circle. Time implodes shattering space: at this exact moment, three magnificent women, free and gentle, are reaffirming for us, too, the right to diversity and unfinishedness. Do they dream? Do they think? Do they rest?

Artwork