RETURN TO THE AEOLIAN ISLANDS
Director Giovanna Taviani
Countries Italy
Duration 80 min
Synopsis
The director, Giovanna Taviani, returns to the Aeolian Islands where she participated as a child in the film Kaos (1984) by the Taviani brothers. The ferryman on this journey will be Franco “Figlio d’oro”, an ex fisherman from Lipari who also starred in Kaos. The Aeolian Islands have always been lands of escapes and settlements. The quarrymen extracting pumice would run away to get away from the “stone illness”, silicosis. And so did the inhabitants of Stromboli, Salina, Panarea and Vulcano, who emigrated to escape the fire of their volcanoes, the attacks of the vine pest on their vineyards, their capers, their wheat. And one summer evening, Emilio Lussu and Carlo Rosselli, political prisoners interned in the castle of Lipari, carried out one of the most mocking escapes of the fascist regime. But these islands where also sites of refuge and settlement. Here the groomsmen, now living far away, came to meet their new brides married by proxy, and personalities from extreme political groups would come to hide by the volcanoes and seek a new life. The great maestros of cinema too came here to give shape to their imagination: Roberto Rossellini (Stromboli. Terra di Dio), Michelangelo Antonioni (L’Avventura), the Taviani brothers (Kaos), Dieterle (Vulcano), and more recently Troisi for Il postino and Moretti for Caro Diario. These films and locations will be revisited through the testimonies of the people of the islands, who participated in the war of the two volcanoes between Ingrid Bergman and Anna Magnani; they saw Monica Vitti and Lea Massari get lost on the Lisca Bianca reef; they helped Nitti and Rosselli in their escape from the Marina Corta harbor. The stories, the exiles, the departures, the arrivals and the returns, told directly by the witnesses of the islands, will be interposed with the stories of their fathers and grandfathers, depicted during their times in the great documentaries by De Seta and the Panaria Film production company, who first arrived on these volcanic islands and recounted their charm and their horror. Each time the images of the journey will dissolve in those of the films, in a mixture between reality and fiction, where the real stories will anticipate the imaginary ones, and vice versa.
The director, Giovanna Taviani, returns to the Aeolian Islands where she participated as a child in the film Kaos (1984) by the Taviani brothers. The ferryman on this journey will be Franco “Figlio d’oro”, an ex fisherman from Lipari who also starred in Kaos. The Aeolian Islands have always been lands of escapes and settlements. The quarrymen extracting pumice would run away to get away from the “stone illness”, silicosis. And so did the inhabitants of Stromboli, Salina, Panarea and Vulcano, who emigrated to escape the fire of their volcanoes, the attacks of the vine pest on their vineyards, their capers, their wheat. And one summer evening, Emilio Lussu and Carlo Rosselli, political prisoners interned in the castle of Lipari, carried out one of the most mocking escapes of the fascist regime. But these islands where also sites of refuge and settlement. Here the groomsmen, now living far away, came to meet their new brides married by proxy, and personalities from extreme political groups would come to hide by the volcanoes and seek a new life. The great maestros of cinema too came here to give shape to their imagination: Roberto Rossellini (Stromboli. Terra di Dio), Michelangelo Antonioni (L’Avventura), the Taviani brothers (Kaos), Dieterle (Vulcano), and more recently Troisi for Il postino and Moretti for Caro Diario. These films and locations will be revisited through the testimonies of the people of the islands, who participated in the war of the two volcanoes between Ingrid Bergman and Anna Magnani; they saw Monica Vitti and Lea Massari get lost on the Lisca Bianca reef; they helped Nitti and Rosselli in their escape from the Marina Corta harbor. The stories, the exiles, the departures, the arrivals and the returns, told directly by the witnesses of the islands, will be interposed with the stories of their fathers and grandfathers, depicted during their times in the great documentaries by De Seta and the Panaria Film production company, who first arrived on these volcanic islands and recounted their charm and their horror. Each time the images of the journey will dissolve in those of the films, in a mixture between reality and fiction, where the real stories will anticipate the imaginary ones, and vice versa.