Ruskin
1975/1997, 35mm, black-and-white and colour, sound, 45 minutes
Filmed in Italy (Venice), Switzerland (the Grisons) and England (London)
First Public Screening: Auditorium du Louvre, Paris, 25 May 1998
Original Version: Ruskin, 1975, 16mm, black-and-white and colour, sound, 60 minutes
First Public Screening: Festival Internazionale del Film sull’Arte e di Biografie d’Artisti, Asolo, 30 May 1974
Projection copy in Australia National Film & Sound Archive, Canberra
Second Version: Ruskin, 1976, 16mm, black-and-white and colour, sound, 65 minutes
First Public Screening: unknown
Projection copy in Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
“Ruskin visits the sites of John Ruskin’s work: London, the Alps and, above all, Venice, where the camera’s attention to masonry and the interaction of architecture and water mimics the author’s descriptive analysis of the “stones” of the city. The sound of pages turning and the image of a book, Ruskin’s ‘Unto This Last’, forcibly reminds us that a poet’s perceptions and in this case his political economy, are preserved and reawakened through acts of reading and writing.”
(P. Adams Sitney, Film Comment).
