Mauro Santini, one of the most important Italian indipendent filmmaker of the last 10 years, since 2000 has composed a series of video-diaries – without any screenplays, narrated in the first person, that deal with time, memory and the search for self – that have participated at numerous festivals (Locarno, Jeonju, Oberhausen, Montpellier, Rencontres Paris, Berlin, Pesaro, Bellaria). His film Da Lontano won the Italian Competition at the 2002 Torino Film Festival and he has participated at following Festivals in Turin in the Detours section. Flor da Baixa, which was presented at Torino in 2004, inaugurates a feature film project composed of numerous videos about absence and distance, where the viewer is the protagonist as the eye captures visions and souvenirs.
“I never work on a script or a prepared text: the images I stop are ‘real’, they chronicle my life, a kind of daily diary, always filtered by my mood when I film. They are born already altered, out of focus and overexposed, or dark and confused, and, like the pages of a journal intime, suffer (in writing, with the same pressure of the pen or in the delicacy of a pencil or a drawing) the sensitiveness of the one who’s writing. I gather images and images without clear motivation; then one of these takes over, becomes necessary and motivates a new work, pulling along the others’“.
Di ritorno / Coming Back (2001) 11’
”Made following the death of my father, Coming Back is a very dear video to me because it is intimately populated with voices, sounds and people who are no longer with us. The movement of the train which bears me to my childhood home, evoked by a sleepless night, is accompanied by a reluctant emotional involvement. Perhaps the only possibility for meeting lies in not moving, in waiting”.
Dietro i vetri / Behind the Windows (2001) 9’
”Whilst in Di ritorno, movement led to a well-defined place, even though no longer present, in Behind the Windows it is lost amidst colours and memories. The journey has no declared destination and dissolves, like the cloud beyond the little window”.
Da lontano / From Far Away(2002) 7’
Da lontano continues the exploration of this inner journey, a journey in a space and place that are undefined. The images belong to the past or to a future; and an elsewhere pushes itself into view to present itself in the form of light, whispering voices, beating wings.
Fermo del tempo / Time Stop (2003) 7’30’’
“This is a video about memory and how it obsesses and flees. It springs from a photograph of a school bus in which, amidst the children squeezed against the windows looking at the rain, I notice the gaze of Giacomo, so similar to that of my childhood photos. In the distance separating a father from a child, the rain hides the tears and blurs the faces; past and present mix into a single, long-lasting instant, stretched out like an elastic that binds, pulls together and apart”.
Petite mémoire / Recollection (2003) 6’
Petite mémoire tells of the forgotten face of a woman and of the attempt to throw some light on the memory, to redraw the features of someone who has become indistinct. But the closer one draws, the more the face disappears, borne away by other images ready to claim the same attention. and at the end of the journey, stopped in an empty station, one is left with the suspicion that outside the window have passed only one’s own projections, or those of other travellers; that the conveyor-belt of memory has once again deceived us, we with our empty suitcases.
Da qui, sopra il mare / From Here Above the Sea (2003) 10’
Springing from placing oneself at the window of an abandoned house and taking on the life that others have lived between these domestic walls, "From here, above the sea"aims to rediscover time through rooms, corridors and walls emanating ghosts of the past.
Flòr Baixa (2004) 10'
In Flor da Baixa, the past no longer presents itself by overlaying or burning the present, but is part of the image itself, altering and deforming it from within. Thus, an old pension with empty windows becomes an echo, a reference to a dreamed image or one seen by others. On the balcony, there is a woman who has always waited, or who has always been awaited
This is a video about distance, travel, separation, the expectation of a return, time that consumes things, snow that hides and preserves feelings about something that is missing, always.
Mauro Santini - 7 Film ( 2000-2004).CiNEMAGROTESQUE.avi 
No problem with subs: these films have no words but they are full of pure music and hypnotic rhythm!
From my collection but ripped by cinemagrotesque group (3p)!
