Paradise Lost in Two Reelers

Franco Piavoli is one of the most important directors among Italian independent panorama.

Through the years, He built one unique and authentic cinematographic grammar. Born in 1933, He spent his whole life in Pozzolengo, a small village near Garda’s lake. There, He imagined, wrote and - for the most part - shot his own works. We visited him in his house, with us only two reels in super 8mm, and asked him to tell us about his next movie. The result is the story of a lost paradise that vanishes into Adam and Eve, the reminiscence of a walk and an eternal desire of love.

Note di regia

We have known Franco Piavoli for a long time now, and in our Sundays, spent walking along Mincio river, near morainic hills, or in some restaurant or at Piavoli’s house, we have always talked about all things friends usually talk about. We discussed our old works, our works in progress and lately we started to illustrate to each other the movies that we never had the chance to make. And that is when Lost Paradise in two reels took form: a story Franco gifted to us on a summer afternoon, a movie he is making, slowly, and that like whole unborn movies presents vulnerabilities and doubts.

We thought about that story for a long time, until we finally decided to go back to Franco with two reels of Super 8mm and a recorder. We asked him to sit on a field, in the shade of a tree, and narrate us about his lost paradise. What came from that moment is a story that continues when images stop to substitute the first reel and even after the end of the second one. A tale that is not simply a storytelling but that suddenly becomes something else, a fabula narrated in first person that swings between an imagined paradise and the melancholic memory of a lost youth.