D’ANNUNZIOS HÖHLE (Heinz Emigholz) (2005)

Lifestyle as Autobiography

The product of a cinematic jam-session held in Gabriele d’Annuzio Villa Cargnacco: four cameramen and film-makers (Irene von Alberti, Elfi Mikesch, Klaus Wyborny und Heinz Emigholz) simultaneously document the rooms of the Villa in their specific styles.
For 17 years Gabriele d’Annuzio (1863-1938) was engaged in designing the Vittoriale at Lake Garda and converted Heinrich Thode’s confiscated villa into his own cult site. ‚D’Annunzio’s Cave‘ is a film about off-the-wall European hardcore-culture, a nightmarish tour de force through 15 rooms of the villa Cargnacco in Gardone at Lake Garda which d’Annunzio has moved into in 1921 and where he lived until he died. Emigholz sees in d’Annunzio the exponent of a bombastic-morbid state art and a predecessor of the Lifestyle movement. He observes d’Annunzio’s habitat with repulsion but also with fascination for the grotesque Noah’s Ark. (Süddeutsche Zeitung)