MPU Music Production Unit, Pietro de Tilla, Elvio Manuzzi, Tommaso Perfetti, 77′, Italia 2015
On a certain morning, in an unused industrial area of northern italy, seventytwo musicians from various walks of life and of various experiences, cultural background, age and nationality, are hired to work in a factory called “Unità di Produzione Musicale” (Music Production Unit). In a dressing room they are supplied with overalls and an i.d. numbers.
Title Music Production Unit
Duration 77′
Year 2015
Country Italy
Genre Documentary
Language Italian
Subtitle English
Director Pietro de Tilla, Elvio Manuzzi, Tommaso Perfetti
Screenwriter Enrico Gabrielli, Sergio Giusti
DOP Andrea Cavallari, Luca Cepparo, Serena Clessi, Pietro de Tilla, Giuliana Fantoni, Giovanni Freri, Pietro Leone, Tommaso Matteocci, Tommaso Perfetti, Luca Quagliato, Moira Ricci, Alessandro Sambini, Simone Schiesari, Guglielmo Trupia, Andrea Zanoli
Sound Tommaso Barbaro, Filippo Cordone, Daniel Covi, Alberto Ladduca, Giulia La Marca, Francesco Mangini, Elisa Piria, Mattia Pontremoli, Ema Shado
Editing Guglielmo Trupia
Sound Editing Duccio Servi
Music UPM
Cast Laura Agnusdei, Alfredo Aliffi, Alfredo Fiè, Aliou Diop, Serena Altavilla, Davide Arneodo, Francesca Baccolini, Francesco Balatti Benza, Cesare Basile, Francesco Bianconi, Francesca Biliotti, Aldino Bonanno, Massimo Botter, Gianluigi Carlone, Simone Cavina, Filippo Fpunto Cecconi, Giordano Ceccotti, Enzo Cimino, Giovanni Colliva, Sebastiano De Gennaro, Gianluca De Rubertis, Francesco D’Elia, Dente, Gianfranco Enrietto, Nicolò Fabi, Federico Fantuz, Carlotta Favretto, Giovanni Ferrario, Feyzi Brera, Giulia Formica, Mario Frezzato, Federica Furlani, Ghemon, Lino Gitto, Alessandro Grazian, Jacopo Incani Xabier Iriondo Gemni, Gun Kawamura, Elisa La Marca, Kole Laca, Lan Morkobot, Anna Lott, Luciano Macchia, Mahmoud Saleh Mohammad, Rocco Marchi, Elizabeth McDowell, Monique Mizrahi, Enrico Molteni, Beppe Mondini, Paolo Mongardi, Rossana Monico, Sergio Montemagno, Alberto Motolese, Cristian Naldi, Marco Parente, Maria Silvana Pavan, Miguel Micao Pawlowski, Fabio Rondanini, Roberta Sammarelli, Marco Santoro, Daniela Savoldi, Carlotta Sillano, Alessandro Asso Stefana, Alberto Stevanato, Valeria Sturba, Davide Tidoni, Vincenzo Vasi, Diego Villalon, Zona Mc.
Production ENECEfilm
Distribution ENECEfilm
Festival Biografilm Festival 2015 Bologna, In-edit Barcellona Spain 2015, Filmmaker festival Milano 2015,
Festival Film Dokumenter Yogyakarta Indonesia 2015, Noida International Film Festival India 2016
Web Site www.enecefilm.com/upm/
Synopsis
On a certain morning, in an unused industrial area of northern italy, seventytwo musicians from various walks of life and of various experiences, cultural background, age and nationality, are hired to work in a factory called “Unità di Produzione Musicale” (Music Production Unit). In a dressing room they are supplied with overalls and an i.d. numbers. Accordingly they gather to be instructed over the rules of their working day which lasts eight hours: they are divided in teams as an assembly line, and they have to produce music industrially.
Director’s Statement
Engage seventy-two musicians, dress them up with overalls, ask them to get into an abandoned factory and oblige them to produce music according to fixed shifts of music writing and execution for eight working hours. Ask them basically to wear the clothes of a workman. Not a figure of the present, though. Not the present day workman as a figure in transformation, in redefinition, in displacement and perhaps in extintion. Rather they are obliged to don a no contemporary uniform, a blue overall, so that they might become a living sign. The musician, who in the common imaginary moves in a regime of free creation, first of all sees himself obliged to a discipline and work rhythm unusual to him. The game, though, is more subtle, the alienation deeper: the mask he is asked to wear – the workman in assembly line – does not have a precise referent any longer. It has become interchangeable with all the other masks of the society, including the artist. It is said that there is no more work, but sometimes we do not realize we work for someone both passively while watching television, and actively when we make a research on google or we comment on a blog. The only difference, maybe, is that for these assignments we do not get any salary. Climbing up to the dressing room and wear a blue overall was a strong sign, but after all a sign of equivalence. Because of this many will feel unsuitable or ill used.
Why this game? Where will it lead us?
Its nature of psychological experiment, following the Stanford Experiment or the Milgram one, has been, then, a pretext. Our guinea pigs were already instructed about the continuous symbolic exchange; they are, like everyone, trained avatars in spite of themselves. We chose some musicians, but they could have belonged to another category: and if the worst comes to the worst, even true workmen. Yet there remains the music and the attempt to get organized. Despite of it all the subjects showed themselves disciplined, thus attached to their discipline. Did they have misunderstand? Or did they try to resist to the equivalence being imposed upon them opposing one of their specificity?
In any way they kept working, as they are used to do.
Director’s bio-filmography
Pietro de Tilla studied photography at CFP Bauer and Documentary at Milan Film, Television and New Media School.
Filmography:
The Shift, doc., 2012, 30’, Italy. Atelier Colla, doc., 2011, 49’, Italy. Music Production Unit, doc., 2015, 77’, Italy. He works as filmmaker.
Elvio Manuzzi lives and works in Milan.
He studied philosophy at Università Statale di Milano, photography at the CFP Bauer and documentary at the Civic Schools of Milan. He works as a filmmaker.
Filmography:
The Shift, doc., 2012, 30’, Italy. Atelier Colla, doc., 2011, 49’, Italy. Music Production Unit, doc., 2015, 77’, Italy.
Tommaso Perfetti was born in Milan, where he currently lives and works, in 1979.
He studied photography and video documentary direction. Since 2004 he has been working as free-lance video-maker and consultant for Museum of Contemporary Photography and AESS Archive of Ethnography and Social History.
Filmography:
The Shift, doc., 2012, 30’, Italy. Music Production Unit, doc., 2015, 77’, Italy.