Sonnenstube

Italy, Switzerland, 2022, 8'

FREE ENTRY

Inside the Specola Solare in Locarno, a man has devoted most of his life to measuring and drawing sunspots, creating over time an extraordinary map of something that cannot be observed but is the source of all images, all visibility: the sun. Sonnenstube literally means “room of the sun”; filming this almost magical room becomes like a tribute to those solitary actions, the over 15,000 sunspots drawings made by Sergio Cortesi in 64 years of activity. The silence, loneliness, and listening to sounds that can translate into images are the stuff of a film in which the big optical device and the gaze of a man are the protagonists. Thus, the existence of an ‘other’ space, a place separated from the world, is made palpable, almost like a temple dedicated to the worship of the star from which life on our planet descends. In this film, the gesture is frozen, put on stage, transformed into story, its poetry highlighted.