Great excitement for this movie which is again from and about Sardinia. The fact that the director was there presenting the film and holding the discussion makes it even more interesting.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sonetaula is a book by Giuseppe Fiori that he recently re-wrote and shortened. It is set up in a decade between 1938 and 1948 (more or less) in the island of Sardinia, inland, in the shepherd’s most true world.

Sonetaula is the name of our character, in reality a nick name, which means sound of wood, since he was very skinny.

Sonetaula follows the story of many other children in a typical village of Sardinia. He has to help the father to tend his flock, because he has to go to work in a factory in Italy, he would make more money, he said. Poor people, after war, hoping to have a chance to change their lives. However, we will discover that this is not the truth.

Sonetaula is a young boy victim of his culture. In the mountain, in the cold, in the freezing solitude of woods and sheep, one day, founding out that his friends stole one of his sheep he goes and kills 20 of theirs.

It’s a revenge imposed by the shepherd culture, where you have to protect what is yours at all costs and teach others that you are stronger.

This act will mark his life and his future won’t have chances for salvation, unfortunately. Rejected now by a people that is trying to emerge from its millenary absence from the evolution, that is rejecting its archaic pastoral existence rules, Sonetaula is left alone with his life of bandit.

Maybe only 23 or 24 years old, Sonetaula, unable to trust and surrender to justice because too far from his known living codes, he plays his last card making an escape agreement with an ‘important person’, the ingegnere. A person reasonably trusted because of his high social position that, instead, has other interests than saving a poor shepherd life.

This movie has of course the charm of a neorealist movie. They took one year to shoot it, in real places, with real people, I mean non professional actors, and with real seasons, the director says. A photography very effective though, with major technological touches, maybe too many to be authentically neorealist. Nevertheless, valuable for its strong ability to make looks, silences, thoughts, feelings, talk.

However, Salvatore Mereu is not giving his true poetry, like he did in Ballo a Tre Passi. Fair enough, we know he will again.

I’d like to thank Jane Clark, Special Events Director at the Ossining public Library for her tremendous support without her this program would have never been possible. This film festival is in fact the first to be held in the new library building that has a state-of-the-art screening room facility with optimal viewing conditions. In case you wonder where Ossining, NY is, I google-mapped it for you.

Our next screening is on April 24, 2008 with the masterpiece of Mario Monicelli Big Deal in Madonna Street – I Soliti Ignoti (1958) – a fine example of the Italian Comedy genre (Commedia all’italiana).

If you happen to be in the area, I do hope to see you there. For all our visitors around the world, you’re welcome to join our online post-screening discussion about the film right here on cafe Pellicola.

A bit about the festival and its goals (description is from the Italian Cinema Sud site).

Cinema Sud, starting its worldwide tour with the screening of the documentary Détour De Seta at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, has been organized by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with AIP-FilmItalia.

It is an initiative supported by the funds of the programme Italia Internazionale, managed by the Directorate General for European Integration of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to support the internationalization process of southern Italian regions (Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Sardinia and Sicily).

Cinema Sud is carried out through the widespread activation of the diplomatic-consular network and the Institutes of Culture on the part of the Directorate General for Cultural Promotion and Cooperation.

In accordance with the six southern Italian regions, some films were selected because they were considered particularly significant not only for the promotion of southern Italian territory but also for their innovative contents and the wide range of cultural themes they dwell on.

Cinema Sud sets itself two goals: firstly, the enhancement of southern Italian territory and culture by showing very impressive images also portraying modernity and the changes occurred recently in Italy and in its South, in particular; secondly, the enhancement of Italian Cinema and of a generation of young authors from the South, who have been able to rediscover the new South in recent years, together with its traditions and millenary culture.

For more information, check the program at www.cinemasud.com

We enter the VIP lounge and start a fight for the food. The buffet is overcrowded, as it’s already 10pm. Hands grabbing us from every side like uncontrollable tentacles, hard to keep away, so I decide to hit the bar and get some wine, leaving Shlomi and Odelia to the food mission.

After drinking some wine and getting some food, we start looking around. Small groups of Italians spread here and there, with their unmistakable natural pop-star attitude, which make them, by definition, charming. A little loud, happy and totally unaware of American customs, they smoke more or less everywhere. Spontaneously charming I would say.

Our goal is to interview Mario Monicelli, that would be Shlomi’s dream-come true, one of the classic masters of Italian cinema. Unfortunately he’s secluded on a corner, between a protective assistant and a giant bodyguard. Although the informal environment would allow us to approach him pretty easily, after looking his sweet old look, I don’t feel like disturbing him, clearly immersed in a contemplative personal silence, out of the crowd.

We look around. Tony Renis, no. He really is not part of our plans. Franco Nero, famous Italian actor, well-known for his spaghetti western movies. Father of Carlo Gabriel Nero, the director of the last movie of tonight with Vanessa Redgrave (his mother), The Fever.
No, even him, with all our respect, does not meet our target.

Suddenly I find myself next to Mimmo Calopresti, and this is almost like a coincidence. Why we didn’t think of him before? His early screening tonight – Volevo Solo Vivere (I Only Wanted to Live) is a documentary showcasing interviews with Italian holocaust survivors that were deported to Auschwitz.

Mimmo has an open smile, on a very Italian good-looking face. Italiano del sud, which makes him even more distinctive, more Mediterranean. He doesn’t speak English, or he doesn’t want to. So we decide to talk only in Italian, easier for me, more challenging for Shlomi.

He is an open person, towards the people. Respectful. His eyes move around quickly, however there is something that makes me notice his deep attention to everything, to any ordinary thing. Maybe it’s his bloodhound nose. It’s fun and interesting having Mimmo’s attention and kindness, in a quieter corner.

We ask Mimmo some questions about the movie we just saw. The following details what we got from Mimmo’s interview at the the bar and from a short Q&A on stage after the screening.

Q – It’s a strong theme, why did you choose it?
A – Because since I studied this at school, I have been always interested in understanding what happened. However, the question that never left me was WHY this happened. I have tried to find an answer, even through this work, but I didn’t. I didn’t find any answer to this question. The only thing, important thing, is that from all of this we have to learn to prevent anything like this, from happening again. We must not forget.

Q – How did you choose the interviews, based on what?
A – I chose those that I felt to be the most emotional to me. Those that touched me the most.

Q – Have you ever been to Israel?
A– Yes I did. I have also been to Auschwitz. I went with Walter Veltroni (the mayor of Rome), who every year takes students there from different schools. Once I went with them, it was a very strong experience.

Q – Why a documentary?
A – To be precise, I actually started my career as a documentary director. I have done other documentaries in fact. I have always been interested in social topics.

Q – And what about your next work?
A– My next work is a fiction; we have just finished shooting it. It’s called L’Abbuffata – The Pigout.

Not knowing his previous works, our questions must end. We thank Mimmo and let him go to his friends. While we promise ourselves to watch his movies. And of course, review them!

More information about the work of Mimmo Calopresti from Repubblica
Mimmo Calopresti was born in Calabria, the region on the point of the boot. He lived in Torino for many years and here is where he started his job. He makes his first documentary A proposito di sbavature in 1985, followed by Alla Fiat era cosi’ (1990), a series of interviews to some ex blue-collar working in Fiat during 1969 when the social and political revolutionary movement wrapped Italy. Then, his first fiction interpreted by Nanni Moretti, La Seconda Volta– The Second Time in 1995. Set up in the tidy Torino, Mimmo Calopresti tells us with a great courage of words the terrorism of those times. It is a success recognized inside and outside the country. With La Parola Amore Esiste– The Word Love Exists (1998) he goes to Rome to set up the story of a cello teacher (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) and a weird beautiful girl (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi). The confirmation of his original style makes this work remarkable in several international festivals. In Preferisco il rumore del mare – I prefer the noise of the sea (2000) he is also actor, next to main character interpreted by Silvio Orlando. La felicita’ non costa niente- Happyness doesn’t cost anything, is from 2002. Mimmo Calopresti, tells about people who attempt to live with their personal contradictions, conscious of the urgency of making a choice and of its probable consequent mistakes.