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[13/01/2025]
Helivision
For example L’Italia vista dal cielo (IT 1966–78)
In the post-war period (circa 1945–75), Europe faced enormous planning challenges: The reconstruction of primary infrastructures for supply, security and transport as well as city centres, institutions and neighbourhoods, further urban expansions through the planning and realisation of large housing estates and later New Towns to fight the often late-approached, worsening housing crisis were documented, at least in Western Europe, by the emerging state television. The new and visually powerful medium which found its way into people's living rooms in the postwar years, became a central authority for informing about planning activities, for promoting them as part of the propagated progress, but also for soon taking a critical look at them. Planning projects, including master plans and models, were presented and discussed by (always male) commentators, presenters and experts; new residential neighbourhoods, especially housing estates, were visited by reporters and residents (e.g. in France mostly women and children) were interviewed. In some cases, no expense was spared: aerial images taken by helicopter provided an informative overview as well as an abstract view from a distance.When it comes to the way of visually showing and therefore to camera work and framing, the special optics and visual regime that the aerial shots establish must be focused on: I summarise the combination of helicopter technology and flight (Boulet 1982, Boyne 2011, Carey 1986, Watkinson 2004), human eye and camera eye under the term ‘helivision’.
I understand ‘helivision’ in two ways and within two contexts of application: Within my research project, which focuses on post-war planning and how it was mediated, advertised and criticised through television by using vertical images (Adey 2013, Parks 2018, Sandoz/Weber 2022a/b,) and particularly helivision, I am primarily interested in (1) the field of civilian exploration and documentation. Here, helivision serves as a cinematographic dispositive that, through the combination of a steered helicopter and a human-operated camera in the flying object itself, creates a perceptual arrangement to explore the world from above, at different altitudes and thus in different relations to the ground level. In addition to case studies in the fields of architecture, urban planning and (infrastructure) landscape, the aim here is to explore the characteristic optics and gaze that helivision conveys in contrast to the (cartographic) aerial photographs usually taken from a higher distance from an aeroplane. In addition to the civilian use of helivision, there is (2) the military use: here, helivision is a system that enables prosthetic vision through the use of camera systems for aerial reconnaissance, surveillance and attack. Helivision therefore combines the human-operated helicopter – which, as a so-called rotorcraft that takes off and lands vertically, is characterised by speed, maneuverability and the ability to stand still in the air – with the controllable direction of the gaze that has long since led to iconic images in fictional films (for example the US anti-Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola from 1979), as well as with camera technologies that prosthetically extend the human gaze. The development, applications and dissemination of drone technologies and recordings of so-called ‘drone vision’ (Chamayou 2015, Green 2015, Pong/Richardson 2024, Serafinelli/O’Hagan 2024, Queisner 2016, Kleinschroth/Banda/Zimba/Dondeyne/Nyambe/ Spratley/Winton 2022) from flying objects can only be understood, as I would argue, if we understand the helivision that preceded it.
Showing Italy to the Italian people: L'Italia vista dal cielo (Folco Quilici, IT 1966–1978)
The following ambitious and extensive film project is not primarily related to the pragmatic context I have outlined before, which in terms of format often resulted in news reports or documentaries. Rather, this somehow large-scale film project aimed to capture an entire country from the air. In the mid-1960s, Esso Standard Italiana commissioned a film documentary series on an unprecedented scale: the filmmaker, author and pioneer of underwater filming Folco Quilici (see Ballardini 1985, Braudel/Bernagozzi, Calcagno/Quattrocchi 1992, Caputi 1999/2000, Quilici/Cantini 2002) and his team filmed all of Italy's regions from the air for L'Italia vista dal cielo (Teodosio 2006, Quilici 1980/1987, Quilici 2005). According to Quilici's own statements, he was relatively free in his choice of content for the multi-part and extremely elaborately produced film (Boselli/Quilici 1979/1980, 111–112). The result were 14 episodes, each presenting one or two Italian regions within the duration of about 35 to 65 minutes. The aerial shots are combined with scenes in the sense of a cultural-historical documentation: they present historical maps which were juxtaposed to the views from above, inhabitants, their crafts, their everyday life and their traditional celebrations, as well as views of urban and rural sceneries, historical and contemporary buildings, vernacular architecture, and works of art. For the shots from the helicopter the French camera system ‘Hélivision’ was used as it provided smooth shots without any vibration. The moving images were each accompanied by music and a voice over text. Quilici wrote the commentary texts together with famous (only male) writers, preferably from the respective region.
L'Italia vista dal cielo’s visual level focuses primarily on Italy's long history with buildings from antiquity to more recent times as well as unspoilt parts of the country and cultural landscapes. However, with an equal interest in the present day at the time, it also shows building projects from more recent times and comments on them in different ways: Notably, the first episode was dedicated to two southern regions and not to Lazio with the Roman capital and the head quarter of Esso italiana that had commissioned L’Italia vista dal cielo. Towards the end of Basilicata e Calabria the visual and textual level put a striking amount of hope in the newly built motorway (Fig. 1). According to the voice over, written by Quilici together with the writer and screenwriter Giuseppe Berto, this infrastructure of regional and national importance would connect the South, which had been isolated for thousands of years, to the rest of the country, especially the Autostrada del Sole A1 relating Milano via Bologna, Firenze and Roma with Napoli. The same tenor of hope and confidence is conveyed by numerous newspaper articles from a conspicuous number of different local newspapers on the first episode. The press wrote about L’Italia del cielo on the occasion of its screenings at industry and tourism film festivals as well as for illustrious and broad audiences in the regions themselves. The eleventh episode about Lazio, made in 1975 and thus towards the completion of the series, conveys a diametrically opposed attitude towards more recent buildings: The motorway infrastructures and the new districts rapidly built on the outskirts of Rome in the post-war period are harshly criticised in the voice over text (Fig. 2), this time written by Quilici together with the literary scholar and art historian Mario Praz.
Regions, municipalities, schools or Italian cultural centres and embassies could obtain the individual episodes and ultimately the entire film series free of charge from the Esso Cineteca in Rome, which also produced educational films for schools. L'Italia vista del cielo was presented in Esso magazines and also appeared in book publications. In June 1978, the Italian state television station RAI showed for the first time the entire series of L'Italia vista dal cielo. It was completed in the same year and thus after twelve years of production. The timing of the first broadcast shortly before the long summer holidays was obviously chosen with care: In the postwar years, Italians had become more mobile thanks to the affordability of cars. They were able to use the series L'Italia vista dal cielo to draw inspiration from the artistic and cultural treasures as well as the country and people of other regions for their holiday destination, reached by car via motorway and thanks to Esso petrol tank fill-ups. Quilici was fully aware of his client's intentions: Esso had already deformed entire landscapes in France, Great Britain and Germany, and then also in Italy, in particular through refineries. Quilici reports on around a dozen initiatives, including a prize for landscape painting, with which the Esso brand compensated for its destructive activities. Apparently, film projects had already been planned in France and Germany, but these were only realised in Italy, and with considerable international appeal. (Boselli/Quilici 1979/1980, 98)
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