Giuseppe Boccassini
Russian Premiere
desire
2025
DESIRE is a non-chronological collage constructed from a corpus of materials drawn from the genre of melodrama. The work, grounded in the practice of decoupage, spans approximately three decades—from 1932 to 1958—and includes titles from the United States, Argentina, Great Britain, Finland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, and Spain.
Desire traces both a diachronic trajectory across time and a synchronic one within time, weaving a particular history of cinema along a temporal axis that is at once specific and archetypal. History itself, though continually shifting in its spatial and temporal configurations, appears to endlessly reproduce the same figures—interpreters who, beyond the specificity of their human and historical identities, seem fundamentally unchanged in gesture, modality, and essence. This recursive logic—an endless slipping and rising, ad infinitum—emerges in the film as a desperate attempt to escape a condition of human existence, here marked as specifically feminine, subjugated by the flow of time as a secularized and systematic machinery of power.
The film thus unfolds as an expression of impossibility ab ovo: the impossibility of a total liberation from the archive, understood as archè—sign, origin, and principle. Even when memory is reduced to ashes, the film’s figures wander along the threshold between presence and absence, suspended within the realm of desire.
Desire traces both a diachronic trajectory across time and a synchronic one within time, weaving a particular history of cinema along a temporal axis that is at once specific and archetypal. History itself, though continually shifting in its spatial and temporal configurations, appears to endlessly reproduce the same figures—interpreters who, beyond the specificity of their human and historical identities, seem fundamentally unchanged in gesture, modality, and essence. This recursive logic—an endless slipping and rising, ad infinitum—emerges in the film as a desperate attempt to escape a condition of human existence, here marked as specifically feminine, subjugated by the flow of time as a secularized and systematic machinery of power.
The film thus unfolds as an expression of impossibility ab ovo: the impossibility of a total liberation from the archive, understood as archè—sign, origin, and principle. Even when memory is reduced to ashes, the film’s figures wander along the threshold between presence and absence, suspended within the realm of desire.
Year
filmmaker
Duration
country
PREMIERE
filmmaker
Duration
country
PREMIERE
Filmmaker
Country
Year
Duration
PREMIERE
Country
Year
Duration
PREMIERE
Giuseppe Boccassini
Germany, France, Italy
2025
30 min
Russian Premiere
Germany, France, Italy
2025
30 min
Russian Premiere
2024 — blast furnace
2022 — Ragtag
2021 — As in a Land, a Vagary
2020 — Lunar Studies
2019 — La Notte Salva (The Saved Night)
2018 — Temple of Truth
2017 — Debris
2016 — Orbit
2014 — The Tin Hat
2013 — Lezuo
2012 — Obscene
2022 — Ragtag
2021 — As in a Land, a Vagary
2020 — Lunar Studies
2019 — La Notte Salva (The Saved Night)
2018 — Temple of Truth
2017 — Debris
2016 — Orbit
2014 — The Tin Hat
2013 — Lezuo
2012 — Obscene
Filmography
Giuseppe Boccassini is a filmmaker based between Berlin and Italy. After graduating in Film Theory at DAMS, University of Bologna, and completing a diploma in Film Directing at NUCT Cinecittà in Rome, he developed a body of research focused on found footage, archival practices, and experimental cinema.
In recent years, his work has explored the historical and formal dimensions of film noir and melodrama—film noir being central to Ragtag (2022), and melodrama to Desire (2025).
Since 2017, he has been the director of FRACTO – Experimental Film Encounter, a festival dedicated to experimental cinema held at ACUD Kunsthaus in Berlin.
In recent years, his work has explored the historical and formal dimensions of film noir and melodrama—film noir being central to Ragtag (2022), and melodrama to Desire (2025).
Since 2017, he has been the director of FRACTO – Experimental Film Encounter, a festival dedicated to experimental cinema held at ACUD Kunsthaus in Berlin.
Official Selection#1
