I was pleased to see that the programme of the Berlin Film Festival (until 21st February 2010) features one of the short documentaries shot in Siciliy by Italian director Vittorio De Seta.
In his essay “Sicily on the big screen” (in the anthology La corda pazza, 1970), written at the end of the ‘60s, Italian writer Leonardo Sciascia divided in three genres the films shot in Sicily.
According to him, there were films in which the theme of love triumphed; films in which the region was seen as a mythological place and movies in which the region was portrayed as a place offended by the stereotypical accusations of the inhabitants of the mainland who saw it as a rough place ruled by criminal organisations.
If you apply this division to all the Meridione d’Italia, that is that part of Italy formed by the Southern regions of Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Puglia, Sardegna and Sicily, you will realise that nowadays it’s probably possible to follow only two trends in films shot in the South of Italy: the first trend sees the South of Italy as a mythical place, the second features films focusing on sociological and political themes.
The vision of the South as a mythical setting was already delineated in films such as The Earth Trembles (La Terra Trema, 1948) by Luchino Visconti, Stromboli (1950) by Roberto Rossellini or Bandits of Orgosolo (Banditi di Orgosolo 1960), the first feature-length film by Vittorio De Seta.
Born in Palermo in 1923 from an aristocratic family, De Seta started his career in the film industry after the war, as assistant director and screenwriter.
Between 1954 and 1955, De Seta shot six poetical documentaries in Sicily: Lu tempu di li pisci spata (The Time of the Swordfish, 1954) about swordfishing in the Strait of Messina; Isole di fuoco (Islands of Fire, 1954) that shows the Aeolian Islands during one of the most violent eruptions of the Stromboli volcano (the documentary received an award at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival); Surfarara (1955), an exploration of the life of the miners working in the Sicilian sulphur mines located in the province of Caltanissetta; Pasqua in Sicilia (Easter in Sicily, 1955), on the Easter celebrations in the areas of Messina, Caltanissetta and Enna; Contadini del mare (Peasants of the Sea, 1955), on tuna fishing in Granitola, and Parabola d'oro (Golden Arc, 1955), on the thrashing of wheat.
In the documentaries, the Southern regions of Italy are portrayed as charming yet scary places where nature prevails over man, often causing panic and terror.
De Seta, used the camera to anthropologically chronicle fragments of archaic civilisations: fishing, harvesting, working and religious rites and celebrations regulate the lives of the people portrayed in the documentaries. Each camera frame turns into a beautiful painting or an intense photograph: the documentaries following the lives of fishermen are probably the most interesting ones since they show fishing as a ritual dance, a deadly battle between men and fish.
Between 1958 and 1959 De Seta shot another four documentaries: Pescherecci (1958), featuring the Sicilian fishermen of Lampedusa; Pastori di Orgosolo (Shepherds of Orgosolo, 1958), that chronicled the daily lives of Sardinian shepherds working in Orgosolo, in the province of Nuoro; Un giorno in Barbagia (A Day in Barbagia, 1958), on the jobs carried out by the women in this area of Sardinia while their husbands worked as shepherds far away from their families, and I dimenticati (The Forgotten, 1959) about the celebrations in honour of Spring in the village of Alessandria del Carretto, Calabria.
Bandits of Orgosolo, De Seta’s first feature-length film was influenced by these documentaries since it followed the vicissitudes of two shepherd brothers, Michele and Giuseppe.
The film was hugely influential on Jack Nicholson used it as the inspiration for the script of Ride in the Whirlwind.
In the following years, De Seta dedicated himself to directing more films and achieved a discreet success with a TV series shot in the ‘70s, Diario di un maestro.
After a gap of at least twenty years, he directed another film, In Calabria, in 1993, in which he went back to pondering on the lost identity of the South of Italy.
In 2006 he completed Lettere dal Sahara (Letters from the Sahara) on an African migrant in Italy and two years ago he shot Articolo 23 (Article 23, 2008), one of the episodes for the collective film All Human Rights for All.
De Seta’s works and in particular his documentaries have been rediscovered in the last few years.
A while back he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 25th Istanbul Film Festival.
Martin Scorsese, who considers De Seta as one of the fathers of world cinema, defined the Italian director as “an anthropologist who speaks the language of a poet” at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival.
In that occasion Scorsese also remembered how an Italian producer gave him as a present for his sixtieth birthday, seven De Seta documentaries and, while watching them, he felt extraordinarily moved, as if he had travelled through a legendary and mythical place, a sort of Paradise Lost.
I do hope that also the audience of the Berlin Film Festival will enjoy De Seta’s work, feel transported to a Paradise Lost and maybe ponder a little bit on the eternal conflict between the North and the South of Italy, on those social and economic differences that still cause racist anti-Southerner feelings in the North of the country.
I think that De Seta's works could even provide wonderful inspirations for fashion designers: if only Dolce & Gabbana would stop conjuring fake visions of Sicily in their coppola hats and think about reusing the colours of De Seta's documentaries and even those images pulsing with passion and vital energy of people suffering, struggling and fighting for prints, they would probably be genuinely Sicilian and less pretentious.
Vittorio De Seta's Contadini del mare (Peasants of the Sea) will be screened on 17th February 2010 in the section "Culinary Cinema" of the Berlin Film Festival.
Add to Technorati Favorites
Lijit Search
I love horror movies are the best, good stereo sound a good sofa accompanied by a popcorn and a good warm hug and there is no better evening, I love the excellent film blog.!
Posted by: sildenafil | April 28, 2010 at 03:44 AM