Michelle Williams Gamaker
07.11.2026 from 16:30 to 18:00
Michelle Williams Gamaker
Saturday 7 November, 4.30 pm
As part of Contemporanea Film Festival, curated by Distretto Cinema
In collaboration with Contemporanea Film Festival, Castello di Rivoli presents a focus on Michelle Williams Gamaker, an artist and filmmaker who critically re-examines the history of British and Hollywood cinema. Through her films and installations, the British-Sri Lankan artist subverts the codes and conventions of cinematic language to bring marginalised characters to the fore.
For the first time in Italy, her two most recent works will be presented: Oberon (2023), commissioned by the British Film Institute, and Strange Evidence (2026).
Oberon
Michelle Williams Gamaker, UK, 2023, 8 mins, original version with Italian subtitles
The work takes as its starting point a series of photographs of Merle Oberon held at the BFI, exploring how the actress’s image was constructed. The artist imagines Oberon during a make-up test for the leading role in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (1948). Through this fictional screen test, she stages the power dynamics concealed behind the camera, exposing the strict control exercised by the studios over the actress’s public image.
Strange Evidence
Michelle Williams Gamaker, UK, 2026, 30 mins, original version with Italian subtitles
The artist combines the aesthetics of body horror with the atmosphere of film noir to explore the story of Merle Oberon, the celebrated actress of the 1930s who concealed her Sri Lankan and Indian origins to escape racism in Hollywood. Throughout her life, she maintained that she had been born in Tasmania to British parents, keeping her secret until her death. Alternating between colour and black-and-white imagery, Strange Evidence retraces the treatments Oberon underwent to lighten her skin, examining the wounds of a denied identity and the price she paid to establish herself in the film industry.
The screenings will be introduced by Paola Zanini, Head of the Education Department at Castello di Rivoli, and Giulia Magno, curator and co-Artistic Director of Contemporanea Film Festival, who will discuss the artist’s practice and the themes explored in her work.
Admission: Reduced museum admission ticket €6.50, including a visit to the Permanent Collection.
Photo: Michelle Williams Gamaker, Oberon, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.