With a film, a book and the installation of a small museum covering 50 square metres, Villa Lagarina (in the Trento area of Italy) celebrates , a hundred years after his birth, one of its most illustrious citizens, Adalberto Libera (1903-1963) one of the masters of Italian rationalism and founder of Gruppo 7.

Shown yesterday at Palazzo Libera, the film “Adalberto Libera 1903/2003: memoria di un architetto moderno”, directed by Stefano Canzio, is a journey across Italy showing some of his most famous works – the Palazzo dei Congressi at EUR in Rome, the Sanzio primary school in Trento, the Palazzo dell Poste on the Aventino and Villa Malaparte in Capri. The last of these, the centre of some controversy in that Malaparte, not agreeing with some of the choices made by the architect, at a certain point fired him, could be described as the “major absentee” of the film. Given that the present owners did not want it to be photographed, the film instead contains a number of scenes from Jean Luc Godard’s film “Contempt” in which Brigitte Bardot climbs the stairs of the villa up to the roof.

Completing the journey are the voices of a number of people who have particularly appreciated the architecture of Libera; film director Bernardo Bertolucci who filmed a number of scenes of “The Conformist” on the terrace of the Palazzo dell’EUR, historian Giorgio Ciucci, photographer Gabriele Basilico. As well as Massimiliano Fuksas, Franco Purini and Lisa Ponti. The film will also be shown at the Triennale in Milan, the Accademia di San Luca in Rome and at the Mart in Rovereto.

The book by Paolo Melis “Adalberto Libera – I luoghi e le date di una vita: trace per una biografia” (Nicolodi) is to be presented today at 18.00.