What if acts of liberation were a small breach in the timeline? The kind that allows us to make that dialectical leap Walter Benjamin spoke of, and encounter the past within our present? And what if liberations were always a conquest of the self—when the self, however, is the result of an active relationship with other bodies, human, animal, and vegetal? What if liberations included those from Nazi-Fascist or imperialist occupations, but also from authoritarian regimes, patriarchal and colonial cages, and from economic and social injustices?

What if liberation also meant freeing cinema from the often stifling mechanisms of the industry? And what if we could then celebrate a poorer but freer cinema, as taught to us by Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas, or Roberto Rossellini who, eighty years ago, created the film that became the emblem of all liberations, Roma, città aperta, shooting in the rubble-strewn streets of a shattered city, even using expired film stock?  “Spring will come. And it will be more beautiful than the others. Because we will be free.”

The 18th edition of Archivio Aperto took place in Bologna from September 26 to 30, 2025. It was dedicated to all forms of liberation — past, present, and future.

As part of the festival, I had the opportunity to take part in a Bolex 16mm shooting and reversible B&W processing workshop. Together with three other participants, we created a short film shot in the city of Bologna, exploring its spaces and architectural forms. Working with the physical rhythm of the Bolex camera, we questioned movement — what sets it in motion, what interrupts it, and what allows us to break free from a condition of stillness, like statues brought back to life.