"Guardami" – “Look at me”

When people speak about beauty, they often think of something visible, to be looked at, to perceive with their eyes. Especially now, when we’re drowning in images, videos, mirrors in which we look for our best version. This is why the project “Guardami. La bellezza dal mio punto di vista” is a challenge and an important expression, with eight young, blind and sight-impaired people who have come to the Cavazza Institute (three in the past, five this year) and taken the recently completed training course. They were asked to talk about themselves in a book and in a film, so that they might express their idea of beauty in five fields: fashion, video and technology, art, photography, and movement. After a creative writing course taught by Silvia Colombini, who designed the project, they began to write and participate in shooting the docuvideo directed by Martina De Polo. A months-long project to which each of them contributed with passion, courage, and curiosity. “Guardami. La bellezza dal mio punto di vista” is a book hard-cover and digital book published by Edizioni Pendragon as well as a film with audio description, presented at the Odeon Cinema in Bologna on 24 November and included in INCinema, the first Italian festival accessible to people with sensory disabilities. Along with the eight protagonists - Candy Castellucci, Karim Gouda Said Hessan, Akeem Abu Karaky, Giorgiana Veronica Malureanu, Alessia Mambrin, Ivan Silvino, Filmon Yemane, and Marco Zollo – participants included Frida Magoni Bollani and Annalisa Minetti, who wrote the book’s introduction and afterword, Elio De Leo, Chairman of the Institute, who wrote the concluding afterward, and Loretta Secchi, curator of the Cavazza Institute’s “Anteros” Tactile Museum and art historian who supported the project from the very beginning with sensitivity and expertise, participating in the shooting and writing a text for the book. As often happens when starting on a group work, you never know how it will end, but in this case the result surpassed all expectations. Stimulated by the subject matter, the eight stars demonstrated that beauty exists and that there are many unexpected ways to perceive it. Without any academic ambition regarding a question that has always been the focus of cultural debate, they awarded us authentic, original, courageous testimonies, opening our eyes to the world around us – a world that we are often unable to see. “Guardami. La bellezza dal mio punto di vista” Edizioni Pendragon is available on all online platforms and in bookstores. The docufilm will be presented throughout Italy in projections by INCinema and during other presentations in upcoming months.

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