LEF is delighted to join the Harvard Film Study Center in announcing that Riccardo Giacconi has been selected as the 2024-25 recipient of the Film Study Center-LEF Foundation Fellowship. Giacconi’s film in progress, Affidavit, follows a 30-year-old radio producer as she records voices and sounds in a small rural village, summoning the distant memory of a violent act that the local community still grapples with. Through her microphones, the radio producer facilitates a sort of séance, where the past is brought to the surface through conversations and by listening to soundscapes at various crime scenes as if searching for phantom radiation that still resonates in the air. The film aims to evoke the practice of radio-making in the form of a portrait within a portrait.
Riccardo Giacconi is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher. He studied fine arts at IUAV University in Venice and received a PhD from Leiden University. His work has been exhibited in various festivals and venues, including the New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Visions du Réel and FID Marseille, where he won the Grand Prix of the International Competition in 2015. His most recent film, Giganti Rosse, premiered at the Torino Film Festival, where it was awarded Best Italian Documentary in 2023. He co-founded the collective listening festival Helicotrema and the audio storytelling studio Botafuego. Giacconi is Professor of the Practice at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Boston.
The FSC-LEF Fellowship is awarded annually to one Boston-area nonfiction filmmaker not currently affiliated with Harvard. The filmmaker receives a $10,000 grant (jointly funded by FSC and LEF Foundation), access to FSC production and post-production equipment, and the opportunity to participate in Harvard FSC work-in-progress screenings, workshops, and other activities.
