IVREA
There is also the Asd Ivrea Letter 22 among those who supported the publication of Shooting in Sarajevo, an editorial project on which the creators, the photographer Luigi Ottani and the actress and documentary maker Roberta Biagiarelli, started working in 2015 and from which in addition to the book released last month for the types of Bottega Errante Edizioni, also the traveling photographic exhibition of the same name that will accompany the public presentations as soon as they are made possible by the rules against the spread of the infection from Covid-19.
Biagiarelli has a strong bond with the city of Ivrea where he has repeatedly trod the stage of the Giacosa theater, called by the artistic director Laura Curino with whom he shared the glorious experience of the Teatro Settimo for some years. Just at Giacosa, exactly one year ago, at the invitation of Lettera 22, he staged his show A come Srebrenica, on the occasion of the 20th edition of the international basketball tournament without nets, and was due to return, last April, with the national preview of The Sniper Craft, then skipped due to the lockdown.
The siege of Sarajevo
The newly released book tells the siege of the city of Sarajevo through photographs / polaroids accompanied by unpublished texts by some of the most authoritative voices, direct witnesses and journalists, nationally and internationally.
«The idea – explains Roberta Biagiarelli – was to photograph Sarajevo from the same places from which the snipers held the city and its inhabitants under siege twenty-five years later. The apartments of Grbavica, the Holiday Inn, the Marshal Tito barracks, the mountain positions have become the ideal point of view to get lost in the mind of those who, from those same places, framed to kill. They were days of waiting, of passing people, men, women and children, waiting for the unsuspecting subject to arrive at the center of the viewfinder to stop the moment ».
The double meaning
It is no coincidence that the term shooting used for the title summarizes the double meaning of shooting with a weapon and the photographic shot captured point-blank.
“In implementing the project – highlights the curator Biagiarelli – we made use of the friendly complicity of two exceptional Sarajevese, Azra Nuhefendic and the war veteran Jovan Divjak, as well as the journalist-writer Gigi Riva, honorary citizen of Sarajevo , and of the photojournalist Mario Boccia. The first shots were fired on civilians from a fifth-floor window of the Holiday Inn hotel on April 6, 1992. From that same window, General Divjak photographed a woman with a red coat, thus giving us a shot for this shared project ».
The book also contains texts by Biagiarelli herself who recalls: “To print it we asked for a contribution both from the towns twinned with Sarajevo, Pesaro and Lucca, and from Paolo Cossavella, president of Lettera 22, who immediately joined the initiative”.
Cossavella’s commitment
“Roberta Biagiarelli – says Cossavella, number one of the basketball club – should have made her debut with her new show as part of the 2020-2021 season of the Giacosa theater, at the end of December, just to coincide with the beginning of the XXI edition of our international basketball tournament, Under 14 male category, no goals. Everything, of course, has been blown, but we were very keen to show that we have not stopped completely. Even if the part of our activity linked to the tournament could not be implemented, that linked to solidarity and cultural exchange that knows no barriers or borders has not stopped. The hope is that Ivrea will be able to host the presentation of the book and the exhibition as soon as possible ».
Roberta Biagiarelli is keen to remember that on January 15, 2021, at 9 pm, she will be at the Giacosa theater, together with Sandro Fabiani, with a theatrical reading, Incantadora- Memories of a filibustiera, visible for free in live streaming on Piemonte + Gruppo Rete 7 Canale 110 del Digitale Contato del Canavese on the Youtube Channel, as part of the In front row at your home festival, organized by the Ivrea theater. –
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