Lady M 5.1 World Premiere Debuts at Mana Contemporary

LADY M 5.1, the 23 minute short film around which the installation rotates, is a screen adaptation of Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy from William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth - Act 5, Scene 1 - directed by Mariano Baino (Dark Waters, Caruncula) and starring actress Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni (Mother of Tears, Phantom of the Opera), in which the wife of the play's titular character, after goading him into committing regicide, is destined to relive her most tragic moment in a never-ending loop, under the watchful gaze of a new bio-mechanical lifeform. The work is not only a short film that centers on Lady Macbeth, but also a transcendental experience inspired by a need to remind us that "man has control of action alone, never the fruits of the action.

Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni as Lady Macbeth in LADY M 5.1 directed by Mariano Baino

Coraline Cataldi-Tassoni & Mariano Baino; photo by Andrew Libert

United by a profound alchemy and the essential grace that connects an artist with the universe's magic lantern, Baino and Cataldi-Tassoni worked together on the film’s production design: the director adapted Shakespeare's work for the screen, edited, handled the Visual Effects as well as designing and hand-making all the creatures which inhabit Lady Macbeth’s surreal cosmos, while lead actress Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, who plays Lady Macbeth, wrote the music and created the costumes.

As a result, the installation's visitors will be invited into a parallel universe, where they can witness, among the shadows and sounds, the alternative dimension in which Lady Macbeth is now destined to dwell.  

The short movie is a complete work of art in its own right, and the museum installation, curated by Italian journalist Filippo Brunamonti (La Repubblica), serves as a devout base surrounding the experience of watching Cataldi-Tassoni's performance - recently awarded by the Best Shorts Competition with an Award of Excellence, in the category of Actress: Leading - as well as magnify the shadows that bridge the penumbra between reality, fantasy and time.

Widely recognized as one of today’s most talented Italian artists, Mariano Baino, who resides in New York thanks to an Extraordinary Ability Green Card, is an Award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter hailed as “one of the great torch-bearers for expressionistic genre cinema” by Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival; Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni is an actress and multimedia artist with a devoted international fan following, born in Manhattan into a family of opera professionals.

Adding their own unique spin to the rich tradition of Shakespeare's adaptations, Baino and Cataldi-Tassoni are like kindred spirits who play an integral role in the Arts and tell the epic tale of our veiled vulnerability and alienating nonsense. Because "What's done cannot be undone."

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