In a city in Nothern Italy, a group of friends organizes the first Graziella bicycle World Olympics (Grazielliadi), the famous Italian 60's folding bike. From the dust of the basements and from abandoned parking places, a piece of history re-emerges, a rusty legacy of mothers and grandmothers. Kshan, 11 years old, has repainted and given a new life to his grandma's b...
"When I get old, I will finally have time to read my books in the garden", said Enrico Cattaneo, alias "Ketto", on the day of his 90th birthday. It sounds like a joke, but it is instead a sign of the wit and vitality that still today characterize him. Born in 1917 in a well-to-do family, he has gone through the XX century in an adventurous and original way. A passionate film...
Above the ground: in the 60's, Mario moved to France and built his house in Landres, Lorraine region. Under the ground: while building his house, Mario has worked in a iron mine for 20 years. Today the mines are closed, the floods made the soil unstable. Hundreds of buildings crumbled down and some other are precarious. Mario lives a kafkaesque situation: for years, he has b...
The streets of Bergamo turn into simple songs made of a few chords and a lean voice that sings, and sometimes, shouts the daily life. The buildings, the squares and the tracks we followed remain visible. The noises are hidden in the deep rut of an LP and maybe in the thoughts of the person that put it on and let it play.
In Macas, in the Eastern part of Ecuador, Fundación Chankuap works as an important mediator between the international members of the foundation and the indigenous communities that live in the forests on the border with Perù. The relationships between the inside and the outside of the forest are regulated with a great precision: every intervention must be carefu...
A professional training center. Regarded by someone as a clashing ground, it turns instead into a place of collaboration and meeting. A Senegalese teacher struggling with lively and smart students. A 11 years old kid from Morocco left his country and family to move to Italy. It's not war, it's not peace. The camera follows the main characters telling about their daily life,...
In 1955, the French director and ethnograph Jean Rouch shot in a single day the film Les maitres fous. The film shows the ritual practices of a religious sect worshipping the cult of Hauka whose followers are workers from the regions of the Niger. After arriving in Accra they meet for their big annual ceremony. The peculiarity of the cult of Hauka is that its pantheon contai...
An actress tells about the film in which she played the part of the protagonist while she cleans the porch of the rehabilitation center. "Are you gonna make a movie?" she asks to the two directors who are filming her. The film tells about the daily life in the drug rehabilitation center Gasparina, moving amongst glasses of methadone, the receipe for potato croquettes, Antone...
A diviner in the desert. An expert fish breeding craftsman. The carps: nothing less than a plague. The "mojarra desnuda", a small fish breeding only in Meseta springs. The hydraulic works on Rio Negro, watering McCain's potato fields, which supply McDonald's restaurants with French fries. A mechanic acting in a classical sainete called El conventillo de la Paloma. The direct...
Franco is sixty. He has spent most of his life in a house that once was his family's farm, in Cenate Sopra, a little village at the foot of Misma mountain. After his parents' death, Franco could have risked ending up in the dreariness of a hospice, but, luckily, he found out he was rich: he was the owner of a piece of land and an house waiting only to be renovated. At the e...
