2005 Vittorio De Seta Vittorio De Seta
Ten short films made Vittorio De Seta one of the greatest filmmakers in human history. These ten films – for which de Seta single-handedly took on production, shooting, editing, and scoring – were made between 1954 and 1959. All ten were filmed in Technicolor and most of them in Cinemascope. The subjects, fishermen, shepherds, farmers and miners from the arid lands of southern Italy (Sicily, Sardinia and Calabria), were filmed without commentary, accompanied only by the sounds of their ancestral crafts and the melodies of popular songs.
De Seta turned away from the elements that at the time characterized the latter period of Neo-realism and that eventually watered it down: folklore, anecdotes and setting. He filmed gest-ures and bodies profoundly linked to the land that provides their sustenance. The subjects are filmed as apparitions that bear witness to and are remnants of an immemorial farming tradit-ion that his first feature film, Banditi a Orgosolo, presages the end of, while his latest film, In Calabria, attests to its irreversible dis-appearance.
Guests : Avec la collaboration de la cinémathèque régionale de Sicile1 et de Cinecittà Holding