French artist Zilda's wonderful project, 'Io sono una forza del passato' ('I am a force of the past'), places figures from classic Roman cinema of the '50s & '60s in rome. as movie characters they are part of romans' collective history; through Zilda's work they are brought into modern life.

The characters are all hand-painted, and then located carefully:
"it is essential to know the social and architectural stratification of a city, to get familiar with its streets, its quarters and to view that urban setting as a constraint that stimulates the staging of my ideas. “Spotting the city” amounts to approaching it like an open-air museum where each wall constitutes a hypothetic painting, a backdrop already developing its own aesthetics and organization of colors and materials.".

Zilda then takes photos of each piece, using the photos as a 'fixer', "immortalizing a set of works doomed to disappear, while they still make sense."

artist: Zilda
location: Rome, Italy

thanks to Jessica at romephotoblog for turning me onto Zilda

This is the latest in Zilda's series of characters from classic Italian movies.
This one is Adele Cambria, who featured in the 1961 Pier Paulo Pasolini film, 'Accattone', a story of pimps, prostitutes and thieves.
See another of Zilda's pasteups in Rome here

artist: Zilda
location: Rome