World-renowned costume designer Anna Lombardi will illustrate the unique craft of costume design in a special lecture at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar) in Education City this Tuesday, 5 November, 12:30 pm at the university Atrium. The lecture, titled, ‘Clothes vs Costumes’ is hosted by VCUarts Qatar in collaboration with the Embassy of Italy in Qatar. The event is free and open to the public.
The event is part of ‘Fare Cinema (Making Films) – The Italian Movie Industry’, an initiative launched in 2018 by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation to promote ‘Made in Italy’ cinema focused on film making crafts – the different professions of the trade that make up the complex mechanism of film production.
The very first edition of Fare Cinema, says the Ambassador of Italy, HE Pasquale Salzano, was dedicated to set designers. For the second edition, he said that they’ve decided to put the spotlight on the artistic and creative work of costume designers, a field where Italy can boast a long-standing tradition.
Costume designers do not appear in front of cameras. They work behind the scenes to make characters more realistic, shape their personalities and put them in line with the historical epoch of the movie’s plot. We are glad that Anna Lombardi, one of the most talented Italian costume designers, accepted our invitation to come to Doha as testimonial of Fare Cinema in Qatar. She will share the experiences of a career driven by passion, creativity and top-level technical competences with the young students of VCU and with anyone interested in knowing more about the Italian quality film-production.’
Lombardi will take the audience on a behind-the-scenes journey and analyse the costumes designed for film sets in the 1950s. The reciprocal influence between fashion and cinema will be highlighted, as well as the close relationships costume designers have with makeup and hair stylists, cinematographers, and directors.
Anna Lombardi
Lombardi was nominated for Best Costumes in the Feature Film Category at the Premio di Berenice awards for the film Anita B. by Roberto Faenza, and in 2018 for Best Costumes at the David di Donatello Awards, (the ‘Italian Oscars’) for the film Brutti e Cattivi.
She has been an assistant to Oscar-winning designers such as Sandy Powell, Alexandra Byrne, Colleen Atwood, Gabriella Pescucci, and Janty Yates on movies such as The Favourite (Director: Yorgos Lanthimos), All The Money in The World (Director: Ridley Scott), Gangs of New York (Director: Martin Scorsese), The Aviator (Director: Martin Scorsese), Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (Director: John Madden), The Borgias (Director: Neil Jordan) and many others.
In recent years she has also collaborated as costume curator to several costume exhibitions, including the Costume Collection for the Cinecittà Studios Film Museum. Lombardi is the Vice President of ARTSCENICO, the European Federation for Costume and Production Design.
For updates and more information about VCUarts Qatar and the various events they are holding this season, visit qatar.vcu.edu.