Noir in Festival is back in Milan on December 10-15, 2021, with a packed program free for the viewing. The festival has tapped a versatile subversive talent, Marco Galli, to design the poster for its 31st edition, which has two new venues in Milan this year: the Multisala Gloria, in the Notorious Cinemas circuit, and the Teatro Filodrammatici.
An artist and graphic novel author published by S.I.E. Edizioni, Coconino Press and Sergio Bonelli Editore and endowed with an elective affinity for the genre – Gribaudo has just brought out a new edition of 1984 with Galli’s illustrations, but he has also done the covers for Maurizio De Giovanni’s audiobooks (Emons audiolibri) as well as the cover for Claudio Paglieri’s latest mystery novel, Fine della corsa (Piemme) – Marco Galli is the artist chosen by Noir in Festival, in collaboration with Arianna Malacrida’s Ghirigori Agency, to design its poster for the upcoming edition. He’s the latest in a long line of virtuoso graphic artists who have stepped up to the plate these last thirty years, such as Gigi Cavenago, Lorenzo De Felici, Mario Alberti, Alessandro Baronciani, and the likes of Hugo Pratt, Lorenzo Mattotti, Bill Plympton, Charles Schultz, and Mojmir Jezek.
Galli has just taken home the Yellow Kid – Author of the Year, the top award at the latest Lucca Comics & Games, for his Dentro una scatola di latta (Eris Edizioni – Progetto Stigma). He served as first character designer on Cinderella the Cat, the multi-award-winning animated film by Alessandro Rak, honored with the Caligari Award at Noir 2017. Marco Galli has risen to the challenge of interpreting the festival’s concept and has envisioned a 3.0 detective caught in an investigation blurring real and virtual space, truth and fiction, light and shadows, and the visible and invisible, all while evoking the theme of the Deep Web, to which Noir 2021 is devoting a special event at IULM University.
“For our 31st edition,” declare directors Giorgio Gosetti and Marina Fabbri, “which marks the return to an in-person event in Milan after two years and a much-followed online edition last March, we were looking for an image that could capture our contemporary reality, crisscrossed as it is by the inroads of the virtual sphere. From bitcoin to Facebook’s metaverse, the world we live in today, to which Noir continues to hold up a mirror in its provocative fashion, exists in a hybrid dimension; it’s a “2.0 non-place” with enormous potential, true, but not without its dangers and dark zones. Marco Galli has perfectly rendered this suspended reality and merged science fiction with Noir’s imagination, enhanced by his own art and sensibility. We are particularly proud of our collaboration with this artist.”
The detective in Marco Galli’s poster also leads us to the less virtual locations of our 31st edition, venues firmly rooted in the urban fabric of Milan itself. IULM University, to start with: for the sixth consecutive year it is partnering with the festival and will serve as its main hub, its IULM 6 theater hosting Noir’s talks and the screenings of the films shortlisted for the 2021 Caligari Award for Best Italian Noir. And this year the festival adds two more feathers to its cap.
The first is its collaboration with the prestigious Teatro Filodrammatici of Milan, which stages contemporary plays and fosters many original works, with a particular focus on contemporary theater, both Italian and international. This will be the location for Noir’s packed afternoon series of hotly-awaited literary talks with leading Italian and foreign masters of the noir genre today.
The second collaboration is with the Multisala Gloria, jewel in the crown of the Notorious Cinemas circuit located on Milan’s historic Corso Vercelli. Recently restyled according to the format “Notorious Cinemas – The Experience”, the venue’s Sala Garbo, seating 270, will be screening all the titles on the festival’s international competition lineup.
“We are prouder than we can say to be hosting such a prestigious event as Noir in Festival,” declares Andrea Stratta, CEO of Notorious Cinemas, “and we can’t wait to welcome audiences to partake in this unique film experience of the screenings of the international titles in competition, with all the comforts and safety measures inherent in the format The Experience that we offer filmgoers.”
In the lead-up to the event in Milan unfolding December 10-15, do let our detective be your guide to the festival channels and uncover all the clues to this year’s program!
Marco Galli was born in Montichiari (BS), on April 1, 1971. He studied at the Art Academy of Mantua from 1984 to 1989 and lived in London from 1997 and 1999. In the year 2000, he moved to Los Angeles for a few months. He published his first comic book in 2007, called FREAK (S.I.E. Edizioni), about the adventures of Roberto “Freak” Antoni. In 2009 he brought out IL SANTOPREMIER (001 Edizioni) and in 2010 NERO PETROLIO, with the same publisher.
In 2013, he debuted as an author for Coconino Press, with his book OCEANIA BOULEVARD, translated in France and Spain; the same year, he became character designer for CINDERELLA THE CAT, the animated film by the Neapolitan production company M.A.D. Entertainment. The film competed at Venice 2017 and was nominated as Italy’s best animated film at the 2018 Oscars®. In September 2015, his book NELLA CAMERA DEL CUORE SI NASCONDE UN ELEFANTE was published by Coconino Press and translated into French. In January 2016, Gallo took part in the Dylan Dog/ColorFest 16 for Sergio Bonelli Editore, as a single author with a short story named GRICK-GRICK. Coconino Pres also brought out his book LE CHAT NOIR in 2017. In 2018, he published ÈPOS with a new self-managed house, Progetto Stigma. His fourth work with Coconino Press, LA NOTTE DEL CORVO, was published in 2019. Gallo has also written, illustrated and colored a 96-page Dylan Dog/Color Fest, awaiting publication. In 2021, he won the Yellow Kid Award for Author of the Year at Lucca Comics & Games, for his book DENTRO UNA SCATOLA DI LATTA, his second effort with the collective Progetto Stigma, published by Eris Edizioni.