Film Folly

From October 22, 2002 to January 19, 2003 – Museu del Cinema

Reality may never have seemed so much like fiction as in the twentieth century, and this is doubtless due to the cinema. We are the consequence of what we have been and also of what we have seen in others. Those who have never been in direct contact with madness only know what they have read about it in books and, above all, what they have seen in films. From the legendary Caligari to the latest American and European productions, madness has provided the most varied film plots with characters and filled them with motives. The extravagant morbidity of folly has stressed and made turbulent the vilest or noblest human passions. "Folly," wrote La Rochefoucauld, "follows us all through our lives. If one man seems wiser than his neighbours, it is only because his follies are better suited to his age and his fortune."
In this exhibition we have brought together photographs and posters, old programmes and modern audio-visual montages in order to relive the memories of so many unforgettable films. By following the trail of the ghosts of folly in the collective imaginary, based on the iconographical representation of their best-known stereotypes, we hope to contribute to the joint reflection on the important psychosocial phenomenon of the illness.