Marinetti (1969)
By Albie Thoms
For starters, I think that it’s important to state that Thoms sees his film Marinetti as a tribute or homage to the Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944), who’s 1908/9 “Futurist Manifesto” kick-started a revolutionary nationalist movement which spanned a wide range of mediums such as painting and sculpture and sound art (Luigi Russolo’s manifesto “The Art of Noises” [1913] and his highly unique and unusual instruments that captured industrial and mechanic sounds are usually what critics point to as the first instance of intentional “noise music”). As the film is a tribute or homage, we can deduce that the film has ties to the Futurist movement in some capacity, whether that be stylistically, structurally, aesthetically and so on. In twenty minutes, Guerassio seemed to provide a very good overview of the Italian Futurist movement, outlining some of its major artists, historical developments and ideas (including those imbued in Marinetti’s manifesto). It also summed up quite well an idea developed in Futurism which Thoms adopted for Marinetti. In 2003, Thoms stated, in interview with Danni Zuvela for Senses of Cinema, that, in Marinetti, he “adopted the Futurist n…
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