Sicilia! + The Wayfarer + The Knife Sharpener

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!’

 

The Wayfarer (Il viandante) and The Knife Sharpener (L'arrotino) (both 2001) are re-edited short sequences from Sicilia!.

 

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

 

The Wayfarer (Il viandante), Dirs. Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Italy/France, 2001, 5 min., Italian with English subtitles

 

The Knife Sharpener (L'arrotino), Dirs. Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Italy/France, 2001, 7 min., Italian with English subtitles