THURSDAY DECEMBER 4th - SPAZIO ALFIERI
BEFORE THE FLOOD
A film by Jos de Putter (The Netherlands, 2006, 58')
Spazio Alfieri - 3.00 pm
In 2070, a flood destroys the Netherlands. Spectacular images of a possible future are mixed with excerpts of films from the past and statements of present-day scientists, writers, priests, and engineers. De Putter made a masterful specimen of scientific and science-fiction documentary, where the strength of the tragedy is accompanied by the search for the causes that provoked it.
ZIKR
A film by Jos de Putter (The Netherlands, 1999, 7')
Spazio Alfieri - 4.15 pm
Myth and history, transcendence and politics, all are combined in an overwhelming, mystical dance. Zikr is both identity and community of men in the name of God. Against the backdrop of the Chechen war, among breath-taking landscapes, wrinkled-faced elderly people, and fights, a millenarian ritual is performed. Bodies dance rhythmically, voices recite in unison, and individuals become a collective body.
NOR HIS DONKEY
A film by Jos de Putter (The Netherlands, 2002, 50')
Spazio Alfieri - 4.15 pm
The last episode of a collective film on the Ten Commandments, Nor His Donkey deals with the tenth. The desire for possession and success are like inevitable traces of the human soul, described in three stories by an exceptional guide, a donkey walking alone down a path of the Pyrenees. Jealousy, desire, and greed drive and muddle the world. They give it a form, and thus create stories.
DAYANA MINIMARKET
A film by Florianne Devigne (France, 2013, 55')
Spazio Alfieri - 5.30 pm
Kamal and Nalini left India 30 years ago and started a new life in Paris. There they had three children, found a home, and set up a business. But now their great efforts to manage their minimarket seem to not be enough. The film transforms into an energetic Bollywood musical comedy where the protagonists dance and sing in a succession of asides worthy of the canon, musical.
EUGÈNE GABANA - LE PÉTROLIER
A film by Jeanne Delafosse, Camille Plagnet (France, 2014, 59')
Spazio Alfieri - 6.30 pm
You can’t control Eugéne. He is fierce and decided as the other 20 years old people of Ouagadougou, the city in Burkina Faso where he lives and studies, with more intensity and courage. The economic difficulties and his bad health do not hinder him. He just takes up his everyday tools allowing him to get some money, together with his enthusiast smile, and goes on like this.
L’ALBERO DI TRASMISSIONE
A film by Fabrizio Bellomo (Italy, 2014, 50')
Spazio Alfieri - 8.30 pm
“Seest thou aught?” asked Jesus to the miraculously-cured person who had his sight restored for the first time. “And he looked up and said, I see men; for I behold them as trees, walking”. Alberi che camminano is the beautiful film made by Mattia Colombo and written along with Erri De Luca, who also serves as narrator. An ancient bond unites man to wood. The walking trees are a young woodcutter, a luthier, a sculptor, a naval engineer, and an old partisan.
ALIAS KURBAN SAÏD
A film by Jos de Putter (The Netherlands, 2004, 80'')
Spazio Alfieri - 10.00 pm
The search for the hidden identity of an author of the cult novel Ali & Nino is at the core of this film, constructed like a thriller. Kurban Saïd is a mystery, but also a reflection on the meaning of identity. Stories exist. Do authors? Since stories have no borders, the film is a journey bound to the site where reality and fiction chase and court each other.