Film

Il mio paese - My country

Nearly 50 years later, Daniele Vicari retraces the journey the famous documentarist, Joris Ivens, took between 1959 and 1960 to film L’Italia non è un paese povero, a work commissioned by ENI president, Enrico Mattei.
From the industrial areas around Gela and Termini Imerese in Sicily to Porto Marghera facing the Venetian lagoon, Ivens’ invaluable repertory material guides Vicari on his route up the peninsula, revealing again the enormous changes that have taken place. Ivens captured the first signs of modern industrialization and economic growth, Vicari the consequences thereof. Today, Italy’s concerns center around deindustrialization, alternative energy sources, land reclaim, immigration from the Third World and the expansion of the Chinese market.
My Country is a broad fresco of interviews and bold images, like the testimony of the environmentalist Gianfranco Bettin or the meeting with a family from Basilicata, which had brought the RAI censors’ wrath on Ivens.

Il regista / The Director

 Daniele Vicari (Castel di Tora/Rieti, 1967) lives in Rome. His feature film directorial debut was Velocità massima, which was screened at the 59th Venice Film Festival and earned him the David di Donatello 2003 as best emerging director. His latest film L'orizzonte degli eventi (2005) was presented during La semaine de la critique in Cannes. He curated the co-direction of Guido Chiesa’s documentary Non mi basta mai and Davide Ferrario’s Comunisti.

“Italy is as difficult to understand as it is to narrate: political conflict, social and cultural upheaval, war, the economic miracle, environmental disaster. When I saw Ivens’ L’Italia non è un paese povero, the film seemed to offer some basic element, a magnifying glass that made it clear where the country was headed: individual and social work.
Work is unpoetic, raw, difficult to handle as narrative, yet it is also one of the few truly universal themes, together with love, friendship and a couple of others. Through work, humans change their surroundings and nature, mark the course of history, create their lifestyle.”

Edizione 2007
CONCORSO INTERNAZIONALE DOCUMENTARI

DOCUMENTARIO
Italia, 2006, 113'

REGIA/DIRECTOR
Daniele Vicari

TAGS:
economia, commercio, industria/economy, commerce, industry, energia e fonti energetiche/ energy and energetic sources