Brescian creativity also shines in the 4th Drawing Biennial in Rimini – entitled «Return to travel. From the Grand Tour to science fiction” – from today to 28 July, a prestigious showcase curated by Massimo Pulini on drawing in its various declinations, with 12 exhibitions, a thousand works and many events.
The Brescian spirit is expressed by the exhibition of around thirty original drawings by first Italian cartoon – «The rose of Baghdad»1949 – written and directed by Anton Gino Domeneghini from Darfen (1897- 1966) and produced in Bornato during the Second World War; and from the pastels of the travel notebook of the contemporary designer Lorenzo Mattotti.
On show
Of «The rose of Baghdad» is exhibited at Palazzo Fulgor Fellini Museum a selection of the thousands of paper originals which were prepared and used in the extraordinary production (over 120 thousand “step 1” sequences) of what would later be the first cartoon in the history of Italian cinema.
They are drawings, rodovetri (transparent sheets of cellulose acetate on which the drawing was printed and painted to be the source of the single frame which then formed the sequence of moving images) and painted backdrops. Doubly precious and rare as «The Rose of Baghdad» it was also the first Italian film entirely shot in Technicolor. It can be seen in the Fulgor theaters where it will be screened, after having been the subject of restoration by Massimo Becattini who was the genesis of «The Rose of Bagdad» – presented and awarded in the «children’s film» section at the Venice Film Festival of 1949 – he also dedicated the documentary «A rose of war» (2009).
The historic cartoon – which deserved the flattering praise of Walt Disney – tells of Princess Zeila, niece of the caliph of Baghdad and betrothed, and of the plots that the sinister Sheikh Jafa organizes to get her hand. The one to foil them will be Amin, Zeila’s young music teacher with whom he will finally get married.
Plot, screenplay (with Enrico D’Angelo and Giulio De Caro) and direction were the fruit of the imagination and productive commitment of Anton Gino Domeneghini, born in Darfo Boario Terme on 30 April 1897, until then a skilled advertiser, who was enthused by Disney’s «Snow White and the seven dwarfs” (1937), thought this ambitious film project.
The bombing suffered in Milan in 1942 by his agency, which for the occasion became IMA Film, pushed him to transfer the production to Franciacorta, to Bornato: to Villa Fè d’Ostiani and then to Villa Secco d’Aragona where the designers – among which the well-known Libico Maraja, Gildo Gusmaroli and Guido Zamperoni – produced the materials destined to become, first in the English headquarters of Technicolor, then in Rome for dubbing at the CDC (in the English version Julie Andrews will be that of Zeila), the cartoon of one hour and 16′.
Mattotti
As for Lorenzo Mattotti, drawings from his book «Viaggio nelle città» (2020) are in the display cases of the City Museum «L. Tonini” in the exhibition “The best trips of our lives. Drawings and stories of sightings, routes and transits”: memories on paper, ceramics and videos by 15 authors who have graphically captured fragments of their lives or journeys.
