Us Above The Brutes by Benedetta Fioravanti

Presented at Sala Berti, Us above the brutes is a short film by Benedetta Fioravanti, developed between April and September 2026.

The work takes its cue from The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island, the 1901 photographic book by J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, in which a summer with the young Llewelyn Davies brothers becomes an imagined world of survival, pirates, and wild animals.

The film explores different ways of living with loss and with a reality that no longer feels stable. In childhood, idleness becomes invention: children create worlds, monsters, and communities through which absence can be inhabited. Adults seek order through reason, theories, and narratives. Fioravanti brings these positions into tension through found footage, combining home movies and images sourced from YouTube with research carried out at the former juvenile reformatory in Bosco Marengo.

A soundtrack commissioned from Tommaso Pandolfi introduces an affective sense of time that resists forward movement, lingering and digging into the same place.

The work concludes a research process begun during ARP – Alchemilla Residency Program and developed with Home Movies, later continued through Mares Art Residency in Bosco Marengo.

Benedetta Fioravanti, Us above the brutes, 2026
HD video, color, 5’30’’. Sound by Tommaso Pandolfi
Produced with the support of ARP – Alchemilla Residency Program, Fondazione Home Movies - Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia, and Mares Art Residency.

About the Artist

Benedetta Fioravanti (Ascoli Piceno, 1995) explores the observation of everyday life and the circulation of images, working with found footage and her personal archive. Trained in Urbino and Venice, she has participated in national and international projects and exhibitions, including the DGCC–MiC’s “Nuovo Grand Tour,” Fabbrica del Vapore, and the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, as well as residencies such as Progettoborca and Fabrica (Benetton).