Fulvia Bernacca, SERENO, 2023

Sereno is a journey through the clouds and through time, a visual and poetic tale about the figure of weather colonel Edmondo Bernacca. For Italians, Bernacca was an institution, so much so that he has become a figure of speech today. He was a meteorologist, Air Force general and journalist. He was lucky enough to have been the first meteorologist to appear on television in Italy in 1955. From the 1960s to the 1980s, every evening, thousands of Italian families waited for his forecasts, to know what the weather would be like the next day. For television viewers it was a regular appointment, so much so that they regarded Colonel Bernacca as one of the family. For me, Edmondo Bernacca, has always been Grandpa Mondo: not just my grandfather, but a sort of magician, a soothsayer, a mysterious man with very big ears and a head full of clouds. He had a wonderful, magical power: he could not only be, but also speak from inside that strange box called television and sit beside me at the same time. For me it was incredible magic. He died in 1993, when I was still a child, and I found myself looking up to find him, looking at the sky, looking for him in the clouds, and as an adult, opening drawers and archives, to discover his life and his passion.The project began when, dipping into his archive, I found his farewell letter, in which he retraced his last journey from the RAI studios back home, and together the milestones of his private and professional life. His words thus became the trace of my project, in which working on memory, personal and collective, through memories and imagination, combining photographs and clouds, I built a new connection with him. A journey, through light and intimate visions, into the history of my family and in some way of all the Italian families that for years welcomed my grandfather as one of their own.

Fulvia Bernacca