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Twisted Realism takes Pier Paolo Pasolini?s film Mamma Roma (1962) as starting point to research the intertwined histories of urbanisation, migration and cinema in the period of "economic miracle" in Italy. It investigates the forms and conditions of "a new life" ? in the process of modernisation that Pasolini addressed in his film, and also in the current status of Pasolini`s film itself, recently restored and commercialised in a digital form. A polyphony of voices recounts the scenario of the film as well as different aspects of its production and diffusion, which manifest political moments within the broader cinema agency. Twisted Realism revisits some locations from the filming of Mamma Roma and embodies a new geography of contemporary Rome. It investigates various "aesthetics of reality" in the cinematographic depictions of the urban development of the INA-Casa Tuscolano district, a large-scale social housing project instigated by the Christian democratic government and built in 1950-1960. Twisted Realism evokes the commodification of 1960s Italian art cinema as a result of the privatisation of culture and the monopolisation of the mediascape, as well as how Mamma Roma was appropriated in order to write a unifying version of the national history.

Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo is an artist duo living and working in Berlin. They have worked together since their student days studying fine arts in Geneva, CH. In 2006-2007, both were researchers in the fine art department of Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, NL. Their recent long-term and collaborative projects, carried out on both southern and northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, investigate the economies of visibility in relation to past and present mobility regimes over the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The resulting body of works manifests divergent histories or unfinished negotiations that account for an entangled modernity. Twisted Realism, their ongoing project in Roma, researches the reconfiguration of urban space after WWII and its depiction in Italian cinema in the period of post-war reconstruction and "economic miracle". By critically examining various "aesthetics of reality" and the merging of political power and cinema, the project proposes a convergence of past and present to question the intertwined histories of migration, urbanisation and cinema. They have shown their work in various exhibitions, projects and festivals including ?The Maghreb Connection ? Movements of Life Across North Africa? and in the framework of ?Chewing the Scenery? at the 54th Venice Biennale. www.parallelhistories.org