Scala Zero

Scala Zero tells the story of a man’s journey through La Scala opera house. The entire film was shot with a “subjective camera” and the live soundtrack. The space and the events are seen through the eyes of the protagonist, whose identity is never revealed, while the spectator identifies with his wandering glance. As the subject passes through a series of thresholds along this mysterious journey, we gain an increasingly clearer view of the secret life of the opera house: that reality hidden to the public gaze by the neoclassic architecture. The opulent gold décor and stuccowork, the red velvets and precious timber of the monumental part: that great fictitious stage on which the public becomes the unwitting actor. Finally, through the experience of this fantastic journey, it is the opera house itself that is revealed as the protagonist on the scenes of a disquieting present elsewhere: the Place is the event.

Scala Zero, originally shot on 16 mm film and digitally post-produced, was first presented at the Biennial of Venice in the United States pavilion in the year 2000 and eventually re-edited in the present director’s cut version.