Public programs /
A desert island: Operai, contadini (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, 2001)
19:00
Film projection in Cinema 1 (Tabakalera).
O.V. with subtitles in Spanish.
Operai, contadini (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, 2001, 125 min.)
After the Second World War in Italy, men and women of all ages and social backgrounds gather in a rundown village between Modena and Bologna, and decide to transform this abandoned place into a community that will protect them from violence and misery: “the good thing,” as the leader calls it. The members of this community talk about the installation of a power line, about how to go out to look for laurel, and how ricotta is made. They talk, and they do so in a forest clearing, where nature manifests itself, with its insect noises, its trees, its lighting effects on the leaves. Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s film, which adapts chapters of Elio Vittorini’s novel Women of Messina, forms a “constellation” of community moments, to borrow the term with which the filmmakers describe the writer's dialogues. It is a new beginning that could be called utopian; in fact, a beginning that, far from ignoring the threat of the fate of its determination, resists giving in to reality.
A desert island is a programme organised by EQZE's students of Film Curating Studies (2023-2024 Academic Year).