Sicilia! + 6 Bagatelles

The first of a trilogy of films based on the novels of Elio Vittorini, Sicilia! (1999) is adapted from the author’s anti-fascist novel, Conversations in Sicily, first published in 1939 but banned in Italy until 1942.

 

After many years away, a man called Silvestro returns from northern Italy to the Sicilian countryside of his childhood to visit his mother. His spiritual journey is a voyage to the heart of the simple things forgotten, an allegory of solidarity and the ‘offences made to the world’. The film, shot in black and white, retains the language of Vittorini’s characters and is comprised of a series of conversations Silvestro has with the people he passes on his travels. As the protagonist says, ‘Sometimes one confuses the pettiness of the world with the offences of the world. Ah! If there were knives and scissors, awls, picks and harquebuses, mortars, sickles and hammers, cannons, cannons, dynamite!’

 

In 6 Bagatelles (6 Bagatelas), Pedro Costa takes unused scenes from his 2001 documentary on Staub and Huillet, Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? (Oû gît votre sourire enfoui?) and edits them into a new context.

 

Sicilia! will be screened in its original 35mm format.

 

Programme

 

Sicilia!, Dirs. Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Italy, 1999, 66 min., Italian with English subtitles

 

6 Bagatelles (6 Bagatelas), Dir. Pedro Costa, 2001, Portugal/France, 18 min., French with English subtitles