Pattini d’argento is a video work directed with Anna Franceschini and Diego Marcon as P.A.D. - Piccolo Artigianato Digitale. It has been shot in Bormio, in the summer of 2007. It features Milan’s precision ice skating team “Hot Shivers” in their three weeks long summer training camp.

 

“[…]The result is a liminal “form of cinema” in which the visual and narrative matter is always contaminated by the many elements shown in the film. Pattini d’argento, which focuses on a group of young ice skaters (the Precision Skating Society - Milan’s official team), is a visual experimentation about movement. Though there are no interviews, the girls’ questioning looks are sometimes shown, like in a home movie, while they are having a rest or cleaning their skates. On the screen the skaters represent their incessant effort and the exhausting training hiding behind their light gliding, an almost hypnotic flowing that becomes an image. The girls are often shown through long shots; in the foreground there are no faces: only feet, skates and acrobatics. Exactly like the essence of the cinema, the skaters are above all “elements in motion” chasing each other and creating colours, lights and sounds: the elements shown on the screen are always connected with the medium and with the spectator’s perception.”

 

Cristina Piccino on “Il manifesto”