January 24–25, 2019

The Spirit of Place: Simone Rapisarda Casanova

A nomadic film artist whose work evades easy classification, Italian-Canadian director (and SFU instructor) Simone Rapisarda Casanova has received international plaudits for his poetic and principled brand of meta-documentary.” His trio of features—each shot in a different country, each concerned with a culture on the edge of erasure, along with the ethics of documenting it—deftly blend (and blur) narrative, non-fiction, ethnographic, and avant-garde approaches in an attempt to reveal what Rapisarda Casanova calls the spirit of place,” a soul that remembers what occurred there. His first film, the Cuban-set El árbol de las fresas (2011), was named one of the Best Undistributed Films of 2012 by Film Comment; its much-admired follow-up, La creazione di significato (2014), garnered Rapisarda Casanova the prestigious Best Emerging Director prize at Locarno.

We are honoured to premiere Rapisarda Casanova’s new film Zanj Hegel la (2018), shot in Haiti and co-written with its cast and crew, alongside screenings of his acclaimed previous features.

Co-presented with the School for the Contemporary Arts – Simon Fraser University, with support from the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography and the Institute for Performance Studies – Simon Fraser University
SFU SCA
Centre for Imaginative Ethnography
SFU Institute for Performance Studies

List of Programmed Films

Date Film Title Director(s) Year Country
2019-Jan El árbol de las fresas Simone Rapisarda Casanova 2011 Canada . . .
2019-Jan Zanj Hegel la Simone Rapisarda Casanova 2018 Canada . . .
2019-Jan La creazione di significato Simone Rapisarda Casanova 2014 Canada . . .