Michel Auder: Cinema Auder

Curated by Luca Lo Pinto. Coordinated by Lorena Stamo. The artist will be present for a talk.

On May 21, 2025, from 6pm until 2am, Cinema Auder presents the work of experimental French filmmaker and photographer, New York-based, Michel Auder, in a unique context: Cinema Ambasciatori in Rome, the last Italian adult cinema still projecting on film, in a hall whose architecture has remained untouched for over forty years. The project, curated by Luca Lo Pinto, and coordinated by Lorena Stamo, will feature the special participation of Auder, who will be the protagonist of a conversation with Lo Pinto scheduled at 9:30pm as part of the eight-hour screening.

Cinema Auder is an expanded portrait of the artist spanning five decades and different moments in his investigations into moving images, from his first 16 mm films (Keeping Busy and Cleopatra), made in 1969 and 1970, to his latest works. The architecture of a porn cinema frozen in time is a perfect device for representing Auder’s vision, and for stepping into it, thus transcending the idea of a simple film screening. Cinema Ambasciatori was in fact chosen for its identity and inhabitance, evoking a promiscuity of bodies and sights perfectly in tune with the artist's spirit.

Auder’s films and videos relate to time on a 1:1 scale and do not obey any narrative linearity. They are documents of times and places, subjective observations of an author keen to record, through the camera lens, visual notes of the everyday, the people around him and nature in all its facets. Over the course of his life, the artist has made more than 100 works from his earliest 16 mm films, through various video formats, to his latest works shot with his mobile phone. 

Auder, born in 1945, began making films at the age of 18, influenced by New Wave filmmakers. In 1969, Auder met and married Viva, one of Andy Warhol’s superstars. They moved to New York and there he bought one of the first commercially available video cameras, which he used to make travelogues and informal portraits of artists such as Alice Neel, Annie Sprinkle, Larry Rivers, David Hammons, Gary Indiana and Cindy Sherman, his second wife.

“A filmmaker or video artist cannot exist without voyeurism. I observe through windows, curtains, doors, TV screens… I like to be close—very close. I reach an immediate intimacy with my ‘subjects.’ They don’t stare at me with serious or suspicious faces; they laugh, communicate, play. This ‘affliction,’ this voyeurism, allows me to see everything, to capture tiny, invisible-yet-essential details—like a single blade of grass trembling on the edge of a rooftop during a winter storm. Unseen and insignificant to the world, perhaps, but to me, of monumental importance.” —Michel Auder

The visual identity is designed by Julia Born, who also created a limited-edition poster for the event.

Cinema Auder is promoted by Associazione 910 and ALG.
With the support of: American Academy in Rome, Società delle Api.
Media partners: NERO, ZERO.
Food and drinks: Fischio.
Free admission.