Battiloro. The last goldbeater of Venice, is a documentary about the last family in Venice, a city that once shone with 300 goldbeaters, who still make gold leaf by hand: Mario Berta Battiloro. Soon this workshop too will close permanently.
This documentary captures an age-old proces, revealing the poetry of the mundane - the labour, the repetition, the rhythm - and the metamorphosis of a hard and inanimate chunk of metal into something as soft as velvet, so thin it undulates like water.
In the film, the square shape of gold leaf mirrors the square aspect ratio. Through intimate cinematography, a-rhythmic editing interrupting repetitive footage and a minimal-music composition that reimagines the auditory aspects of the process, the viewer is transfixed as the material is being transformed.
Battiloro. The last goldbeater of Venice, is a tribute to a slow craft in a fast-paced world; enduring on the threshold of disappearance.
CREDITS
Featuring: Marino Menegazzo, Sabrina Berta and Sara Menegazzo
A film by: Eos Brüggen, Jesse Kroon, Arnaud Bellemans and Timon Persoon
Directed by: Eos Brüggen
Cinematography: Jesse Kroon
Production: Machtelt Brüggen Israëls
Edit: Arnaud Bellemans
Composition: Timon Persoon
Original music: Vorrei spiegarvi, o Dio, K.418 (Mozart). The Orchestra Of The Eighteenth Century, with Cyndia Sieden, conducted by Frans Brüggen
With special thanks to: Thom Schrama, Zephyr Brüggen, Anne-Frans de Vink, Joost Kroon and Kate Rockett