An initiative organized to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci.
Within the frame of Science in the City Festival
Directed by Francesco Invernizzi | 2018/2019 – Italy | Duration: 90 min. | International version with English subtitles
Leonardo Cinquecento is the story of a journey of discovery into the thinking and scientific legacy of Leonardo da Vinci. Starting from his codices, completely digitalized and analyzed thanks to artificial intelligence, it reconstructs how his ideas are still valid and the basis of contemporary research and production.
By means of these analyses and the contribution of international experts, historians, technicians, engineers and leading edge technology companies, the documentary investigates the contemporary repercussions of Leonardo’s observations and how these are now applied in the everyday work of companies and institutions.
This year, marking 500 years since the death of Leonardo da Vinci, celebrations are being prepared with ceremonies and international exhibitions to remember his universal talent and pay tribute to him, and Leonardo Cinquecento allows us to retrace his immense wealth of studies and analyses – not yet entirely interpreted and deciphered – in the widest fields of knowledge and art, comprehensively investigating the transverse nature of his thinking: military and civil engineering, town planning, observation of nature, artistic disciplines and human anatomy.
The film has been included in the Milan city council’s official program for the Leonardo da Vinci 500 year celebrations “Milano Leonardo 500”, being regarded as worthy of cultural interest, and enjoys the special patronage of the Regione Lombardia and other public and private institutions.
A week before the 91st Oscar ceremony, from 17 to 23 February 2019, during the Los Angeles Italia Festival, promoted around the world by the Istituto Capri and supported by the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali (Direzione Generale Cinema), Eni and ICE, Leonardo Cinquecento and the previous films Bernini and Mathera will be presented as a world preview. Mathera will actually be screened as a tribute on the occasion of Francis Ford Coppola’s eightieth birthday and to the city of Matera, European Capital of Culture 2019.
In the five hundredth anniversary of the death of the Tuscan genius, which coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the moon landing, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) opened up its archives to Magnitudo Film. Original footage from the Apollo missions accompanies Leonardo’s notes on the moon and the sky in the documentary film Leonardo Cinquecento.
TECHNICAL CREW
Direction: Francesco Invernizzi
Screenplay: Stefano Paolo Giussani con Alice Gambara, Marcello Gobbi e Gianluca Dario Rota
Director of Photography: Massimiliano Gatti
Editing: Roberta Borgonovo
Original music: Diego Ronzio
Scientific advisors:
Art: Gigetta Dalli Regoli (art historian, previous director of the Drawings Room at the Museo degli Uffizi, Florence), Maria Teresa Fiorio (art historian, Università di Milano, curator of the Mostra Leonardo for Expo 2015), Antonio Natali (art historian, former director of the Museo degli Uffizi, Florence) and Claudio Salsi (art historian, superintendent of the Castello Sforzesco museums, Milan, Università Cattolica di Milano).
Science: Antonio Bicchi (director of the Istituto Piaggio and Soft Robotics Lab, Università di Pisa), Massimo Cacciari (philosopher, Università San Raffaele), Gianvito Martino (neuroscientist, scientific director Ospedale San Raffaele), Paolo Mazzarello (history of medicine lecturer, Università di Pavia).
Technology: Stefano Boeri (architect and town planner, winner of the RIBA Award 2018), Maurizio Longoni (flight historian, curator of the Museo dell’Aeronautica Volandia), Claudio Giorgione (art historian, curator of the Leonardo Arte e Scienza department at the Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, Milan).