Calendoola: UTU is the pilot episode of Calendoola, an ongoing expanded TV series by Invernomuto. UTU was developed and filmed entirely within the spaces of GLUCK 50, Milano.
Calendoola aims to function as a depiction of the Ruatoria events reported in the Ngati Dread trilogy, and at the same time as a context-specific organism, its next episodes to be produced in different informal and institutional circumstances. Calendoola: UTU – apart from being a first 20-minute episode – generated props, costumes, sculptures and installations.

Calendoola: UTU (Invernomuto, 2016) is the pilot episode of Calendoola, an ongoing series of works that avails itself of the structure and production processes of a TV series. UTU was developed and filmed entirely within the spaces of GLUCK 50, Milano.

The narrative framework and screenplay stem from a loose adaptation of the trilogy of books Ngati Dread, in which journalist Angus Gillies closely - if somewhat biasedly - reports the events that took place in the town of Ruatoria, New Zealand, between 1985 and 1990.

This true story of conflicts between the inhabitants of the village and a group of Maori rastafarians, works as a container of archetypal clash dynamics between natives and settlers, the displaced and the presumed owners of a small tract of land.
Calendoola, in a similar way, aims to function as a depiction of those particular events, and at the same time as a context-specific organism permeable to the influences (historical, aesthetic, political, linguistic…) peculiar to the different situations it installs into. The next episodes of Calendoola, in fact, are to be produced in different informal and institutional circumstances, with its overarching plot and characters proceeding, while contextual specificities leak into it.

In UTU, the exaggeration of the mise-en-scène (thanks in part to the massive use of post-production effects) adds layers of complexity to the interpretation of real events: the result is a hybrid between the two, or an intermittent sequence in which one takes the place of the other without interruption.

Invernomuto’s first foray into fiction, Calendoola: UTU – apart from being a first 20-minute episode – breaks free of the frame in order to generate props, costumes, sculptures and installations. Similarly, acting (UTU is shot in three languages: Italian, English and Spanish) and performance have been parasitized and coexist seamlessly within the film.