Cesare Bedogné is an Italian photographer, film-maker and writer. He graduated with honors in Mathematics, with a thesis on Minkovski Space-Time, the geometrical theory at the basis of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. In the course of his studies he also deepened his interest for the visual arts, with particular attention to cinema and photography, and in the early 90’s he set up his first darkroom in the Netherlands, where he had joined his girl-friend Monique. In those years, “in the aim to capture the gaze in its pure state” he developed his Innerscapes project (currently included in the Dutch Years series), focusing on “the strange moments when interior and exterior, the eye and the things looked at, seem to dissolve one in another”. After the loss of Monique, due to leukemia (1998), Cesare Bedogné returned to Italy and started working on the “Broken Images” series (a quote from T.S.Eliot) in a deserted Sanatorium in the Italian Alps, where – in his own words - he recognised his “personal landscape of desolation, stilled in a frozen twilight: the mysterious bareness where the soul, alone, returns to itself”.
Starting from the late ‘90’s his photographs have been exhibited, solo and in group shows, in several art galleries and museums worldwide, such as Ch'i Contemporary Art Gallery in New York, Dagmar Schmidla Art Gallery in Cologne, at the MIIT Museum of Contemporary Arts of Torino, at Gallery Incantations in Genoa, at the National Museum of Photography Sorlini in Brescia, at the Italian Institute of Culture of Athens and at Fotomuseum Den Haag in the Netherlands.
In 2007 Cesare Bedognè moved to Greece, where writing also became one of his privileged means of expression. He published to date four collections of poems and short stories. His first, autobiographical novel “Oltre l’Azzurro” (“Beyond the Blue”, a recollection of his Dutch years) and the author’s photographs, were at the basis of the film "Story for an empty theatre", which Cesare Bedognè co-directed in 2016 with the Russian film-maker Alexandr Balagura. This film was selected to date for over thirty international film festivals and won several awards, both as Best Documentary Film and Best Experimental Film. In particular, "Story for an empty theatre" was awarded a Certificate of Merit in the Great Indian Film and Literature Festival of New Delhi, the Best Experimental Film Award at the Festival del Nuovo Cinema di Alghero and the Best Experimental Film Award at the New Renaissance Film Festival of Amsterdam. The film was also screened at the London Greek Film Festival, at the Festival Internazionale del Cinema Documentario Marcellino de Baggi, at the Innuendo Film Festival of Milan (where it was awarded a Special Mention of the Jury) and many others.
In 2017 he shot in Lesvos his second film project, "Maria's Silence", which was also awarded numerous prizes internationally, such as the Best Avant-Garde Film Award at the Concrete Dream Festival of Los Angeles ("Philippe Mora Award") and the Best Feature Narrative Award at the AMIIWorkFest of Vilnius (a festival for first, second and third time film-makers organized by Inkubatorius, one of the biggest audiovisual educational centers in the Baltic States). Maria's Silence also won the Best Experimental Film Award at the 4th edition of the European Cinematography Awards (Amsterdam 2019), the Best Director Award in the Experimental section of the New York Aphrodite Film Awards, the Best Experimental Film Award in FICCSUR Valparaiso. Maria's Silence was also screened at the Harlem International Film Festival of New York,at the One Shot Film Festival of Yerevan, organized by the Armenian Centre for Contemporary Experimental Arts, at the 69th edition of the prestigious Montecatini Short Film Festival (Italy), at at the New Vision Film Festival of Amsterdam, at AVIFF Cannes Art Film Festival, at Bideodromo Bilbao Experimental Film and Video Festival (Fundación BilbaoArte Fundazioa, Spain), at the Norwegian Seagull International Short Film Festival, at the Cinemistica Film Festival of Granada, at the Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival, and the Berlin Revolution Film Festival and at the Italian Cultural Institute of Athens, in the context of a retrospective exhibition where his poetry collection Nessuno/Kanenas was also presented in the Greek translation of Anna Papastavrou.
In 2019 Cesare Bedognè completed his third short film project, entitled "The Last Step of an Acrobat", winner of the Best Film Award again at AMIIWorkFest of Vilnius and of a Special Mention of the Jury for experimental cinema both at the New Renaissance Film Festival of Amsterdam and at Il Varco Short Film Festival of Pescara. This work was also presented among the others at the VI Edition of Cinemistica Film Festival in Granada, at the Scandinavian Film Festival of Helsinki, at the Illambra Experimental Film Festival of Berlin, at the Les Rimbaud du Cinema Film Festival of Charleville and at the prestigious Europe Autour de l'Europe Film Festival of Paris.
In July 2021 he completed a new short film entitled “Photographing New York" and inspired by the homonymous poem he wrote many years before, on occasion of his first solo exhibition overseas. This experimental short will have its world premiere in Vienna next Novembre, on occasion of the prestigious 6th Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival (the second world's largest Festival of its kind). The film will also be screened in Paris in November 2021 at the 16th L'Europe Autour de l'Europe"Film Festival and at the 75° Festival Internazionale del Cinema di Salerno (22-26 November 2021).
Cesare Bedognè recently completed (March 2022) another documentary/experimental short entitled "Lost Images", winner of numerous awards internationally, which premiered in Italy at the prestigious 76° Festival Internazionale del Cinema di Salerno.


Further information is available on the artist's web-sites:

www.cesarebedogne.it

www.cesarebedogne.com