Gianfranco Brebbia
Directing
Biography
Gianfranco Brebbia was born in Varese on May 2, 1923. Achieved his studies at the Salesian school in Milan, at age 20, during World War II, he was interned in Switzerland, from 1943 to 1945. During his internment he learned the job tailoring, activities that continued later, after returning to Italy. The Nature of the earth Swiss gave him a taste that will be found in his films. Brebbia, from an early age, he devoted himself to photography and, in 1962, made his first movie with the camera Bolex H8 Reflex. Since that time, his camera became an integral part of his life. Varese was one of his favorite subjects: he documented the vibrant artistic ferment of the sixties and denounced the building boom that destroyed historic buildings in the city center. In the second half of the sixties, Brebbia was part of the Cooperative of Independent Cinema in Rome. This meeting developed and further increased the its spirit of inquiry and freedom of expression, taking it to carry more than 140 experimental films (found in Archive only 45). In the last years of his life he devoted himself to figurative art, composing with technical cadres in collage technique typical of Pop Art. He disappeared suddenly in Varese, January 7, 1974, at the age of fifty years, leaving a precious film archives kept by December 2015 at the Historical Archives of the Italian Film Library in Milan.
Known For
The film documents the ‘UFO: oggetti volanti’ happening, which took place in 1968 on Monte Olimpino. The event was organised by Bruno Munari and Daniela Palazzoli (then editor of the magazine BIT), who appear in the film. The theme of the event was flying art objects.
UFO
No description available.
Ho fatto un film a Varese 1°
Experimental short by Gianfranco Brebbia.
Polemizzando in bianco e nero
Experimental short by Gianfranco Brebbia.
Ho fatto un film a Varese 2°
No description available.
Idea assurda per un filmmaker - Luna
No description available.
Idea assurda per un filmmaker - Ester
No description available.
Anno 2000 - Prima Parte
No description available.
Idea assurda per un filmmaker - Matilde
You pass through the air that compresses you - you see passing white and yellow hatches - and green prairies - red signals - vehicles with half glasses against the sun that hits your eyes - circle and the center a type of tool that gives you the possibility of making noise. And you see behind everything that follows you. Then you stop and see the sea and the flag: ours. A bicycle hanging like a hanged man above the water (it is touched arrhythmically by light waves). Characters: the usual ones but actually framed inside that 120 by 16mm lens. It ends with the return home.
Tostra
No description available.
Idea assurda per un filmmaker - Germana
Scratched film with invisible effects. The film was engraved with a dental technician’s bur and coloured with India ink
Bet
The sculptor is compared to the martyr.
Identificazione
Electronic music, with tribal rhythms, accompanies the images with overlapping colors. A finger engraves oil colors on a board, creating geometric grooves. Close-ups by the painter Sandro Uboldi, alternating with plays of light.
Desert in Sunlight
Experimental short by Gianfranco Brebbia.
Amore in antitesi
Scratched film with sensory effects.
Bazar
Brebbia’s film shot in his native town is a mix of footage from the historical core of Varese that has to give way shortly to new residential areas and building sites. The major focal points of the camera eye are young people huddled on the main square, Piazza del Podesta. Fleeting details of their facial expressions, held for an extra second before they vanish, focus on musings about lives of the locals in the year 2000.
Anno 2000 - Seconda Parte
The manifestation of femininity.
Atom
Scratched film with pyrotechnic effects.
Astor
An experimental film by Gianfranco Brebbia
Stein n°2
In Elections, images appear of the center of Varese during the electoral campaign period in 1970, in which Brebbia participated as a PSU candidate. We see boys in the Brebbia shop, among them we recognize the daughter Giovanna and Claudio Panini. In some frames you can also see Brebbia.