La Maddalena

Italie

Bêka & Lemoine

Paris

Ethical questions

The island of La Maddalena north of Sardinia should have hosted the G8 in 2009. On the site of the former Arsenal, the brand new conference
centre awaited the arrival of the heads of state. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi ultimately decided otherwise, and the G8 took place in Aquila, which had just been destroyed by an earthquake. The barely finished buildings on the island were abandoned, revealing fraud, corruption and pollution problems. In the first of these two films that mirror one another, architect Stefano Boeri, who partially designed the site, bitterly describes the reasons for the disaster. Some miles away, on the island of Budelli, Mauro Morendi lives like Robinson Crusoe and has built his home using items deposited on the shore by the tide—for example making a chair from driftwood and Murano glass from the façade of the La Maddalena complex. This simple, gratuitous act gives even greater resonance to the vanity of the La Maddalena project. These twin films highlight the disgraceful wastefulness of our times.