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Helivision
For example L’Italia vista dal cielo (IT 1966–78)
In the post-war period, Europe faced enormous planning challenges: The reconstruction of primary infrastructures for supply, security and transport as well as city centres, institutions and neighbourhoods, the planning and realisation of urban expansions, large housing estates and new towns to fight the often late-approached, worsening housing crisis were documented, at least in Western Europe, by the simultaneously 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 taking a critical look at them. Planning projects, including master plans and models, were presented and discussed by commentators and experts; new residential neighbourhoods, especially housing estates, were visited by reporters and residents were interviewed. In some cases, no expense was spared, as 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 these aerial shots established become a central issue: the combination of helicopter technology and flight (Boulet 1982, Boyne 2011, Carey 1986, Watkinson 2004), human eye and camera eye can be summarised under the term ‘helivision’.
By focusing on post-war planning and its mediation, advertisment and critiques through television and vertical images (Adey 2013, Parks 2018, Sandoz/Weber 2022a/b), helivision can be conceived in two ways and within two contexts of application: on the one hand, it operates in the field of civilian exploration and documentation. Here, it serves as a cinematographic dispositive that, through the interplay 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 and morphological structures. In contrast to (cartographic) aerial photographs usually taken from a higher distance from an airplane, helivision conveys its own characteristic optics and gaze of buildings, urban fabrics, infrastructure, landscape and territory. In addition to this civilian use, helivision also provides a military use: here, helivision enables prosthetic vision through the application 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 such as the US anti-Vietnam-War film Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola (1979), as well as with camera technologies that prosthetically extend the human gaze.
The ambitious and extensive film project “L’Italia vista dal cielo”, created by Folco Quilici between 1966 and 1978, is an exceptional large-scale helivision project which aimed to capture an entire country from the air. In the mid-1960s, Esso Italiana commissioned a film documentary series on an unprecedented scale: the filmmaker, author and pioneer of underwater filming Folco Quilici (see Ballardini 1985, Caputi 1999/2000, Quilici/Cantini 2002) and his team filmed all of Italy’s regions from the air to bring them close to a national and international audience (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). His efforts resulted in 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 evidence historical maps juxtaposed to 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, written by Quilici together with other famous authors, preferably from the respective region.
The film’s visual level focused primarily on Italy’s long history with buildings from antiquity to more recent times as well as unspoiled areas of the country and cultural landscapes. However, with an equal interest in the contemporary, it also showed more recent building projects commented on in different ways: The first episode broadcasted in 1968 was not dedicated to Lazio and the Roman capital where Esso Italiana had established its headquarters, but to two southern regions, Basilicata and Calabria. Towards the end of this first episode, the visual and narrative strands set a striking amount of hope in the building of the new motorway (Fig. 1). According to the voice over, written by Quilici and Giuseppe Berto, this infrastructural project of regional and national importance would connect Southern Italy, which had been “isolated for thousands of years”, to the rest of the country and especially to the Autostrada del Sole which linked Milan via Bologna, Florence and Rome to Naples. In contrast, the eleventh episode about Lazio produced in 1975 and thus towards the completion of the series, reveals a diametrically opposed attitude towards more recent building activities, as the motorway infrastructures and the new districts rapidly built on the outskirts of Rome in the post-war period were harshly criticised in the voice over text (Fig. 2).
In June 1978, Italy’s public broadcasting company RAI showed for the first time the entire series of “L’Italia vista dal cielo”. It was completed in the same year after twelve years of production. The timing of the first broadcast shortly before the long summer holidays was obviously chosen with care: due to the affordability of cars, Italian people had become more mobile in the postwar years and could draw inspiration from the series when choosing their holiday destinations – discovering them on television thanks to the hovering camera view of “helivision” and reaching them by car thanks to the motorway and Esso petrol tank fill-ups.
Bibliography:
Adey, Peter, Whitehead, Mark, and Williams, Alison J. (eds.), From Above: War, Violence, and Verticality, Hurst, London 2013.
Ballardini, Bruno, Folco Quilici: un mestiere come avventura, Dedalo, Bari 1985.
Boselli, Laura, Folco Quillici [sic!] – dalle serie televisive al film: Indagine di un’esperienza cinematografica, Master Thesis, Università degli studi di Bologna, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Corso di Laurea in discipline delle arti, musica e spettacolo, Bologna 1979/1980.
Boulet, Jean, History of the Helicopter as Told by its Pioneers 1907–1956, Edition France-Empire, Paris 1982.
Boyne, Walter J., How the Helicopter Changed Modern Warfare, Pelican Pub. Co., Gretna 2011.
Caputi, Ilaria, Il cinema di Folco Quilici, Marsilio, Venezia 2000.
Caputi, Ilaria, Il cinema di Folco Quilici, un cinema per l'uomo e per l'ambiente, Casea, Bologna 1999.
Carey, Keith, The Helicopter: An Illustrated History, Stephens, Wellingborough 1986.
Parks, Lisa, Rethinking Media Coverage: Vertical Mediation and the War on Terror, Routledge, New York 2018.
Quilici, Folco, and Cantini, Lorenzo, L'Italia vista dal cielo, 1966–1984, Dai film a dai libri della Esso Italiana, Esso italiana, Milano 2002.
Quilici, Folco, Dal cielo, l’Italia, Fabbri, Milano 1987.
Quilici, Folco, Italia dal cielo, Viaggio per immagini nella storia, Donato, Bari, 1980.
Teodosio, Annarita, ‘Cities from the Sky: Aerial Photography in Select 20th-Century Italian
Watkinson, John, Art of the Helicopter, Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford 2004.
Weber, Anne-Katrin, and Marie Sandoz, Transbordeur, Photographie, histoire, société [L'image verticale. Politiques de la vue aérienne], 6 (2022).
Weber, Anne-Katrin, and Marie Sandoz, ‘Introduction, Pour une histoire matérielle et intermédiatique de l'image verticale’ Transbordeur, Photographie, histoire, société [L'image verticale. Politiques de la vue aérienne], 6 (2022), pp. 6–12.