Andrea Sbarretti had anticipated it in June 2023, in the historic Mario Monicelli cinema in Narni at the end of the preview of the docufilm Su questi Montagne. Among his upcoming commitments, he had that of a sequel to his fifth film Il Lento Inverno. «Rather a denunciation, Norcia six years later – the director had specified – of the post-earthquake narrated in the film, the Norcia still incomplete in its reconstruction».
Titled Il terremoto di Norcia, the new feature film will be screened on April 12, 2024, at 9:00 pm, again at the Monicelli in Narni. An opportunity to retrace the history of an independent Umbrian director. Of his stylistic choice to narrate those landscapes that current cinema, by now, increasingly relegates to very few shots and to prefer protagonists who play themselves in the film.
At the time of my first interview with Andrea Sbarretti in 2017, the 33 chapters of Io Rifletto were going strong, a docufilm whose first episode was filmed in Civitella del Lago, Guardea and Montecchio, 3 little-known towns in the Orvieto area. «The idea was precisely to tell the story of small realities in Umbria, through the lives of the protagonists». Sbarretti explained the underlying theme of that traveling documentary as a «maniacal presentation of the topography of places. Because places are always the real protagonists and influence the behavior of the population». Many other villages were filmed by the director in that series, with stories of deep ties to the territory. In the meantime, the director from Terni had shot 4 other films: Il muro del passato, La sella del vento, Don Pierino and Lontano da tutti. The choice of the documentary genre guarantees him absolute freedom in creating emotions through particular moments, a sunset, a snowfall, the silence of the mountains. Apparent simplicity of the story of the Umbrian Valnerina, a location always at the center of his shots. And actors who are not the usual faces of cinema that make all the films seem similar but local interpreters. «I suppose that the spectators» he explains «are tired of always seeing the same Italian comedies or the same stereotypical American films. I think they also want to see new actors, new looks, different expressions on faces that are not always the same masks».
For the film Su questi montagne – awarded at the XIX Terni Film Festival for best production – the slow, meticulous shots, often filmed in the golden backlight of the end of the evening, draw a time marked by daily work activities, away from the artifices of the city: caring for the animals, grazing, harvesting the olives, repairs and even prayer, when the few inhabitants of Castellonalto and Colleolivo are joined by the hermit Pietro who lives, up, at a thousand meters. The only noises are the slow engines of the tractors, he seems to be waiting for a solution. But nothing happens if not the repeated exercise that tempers, the sharp look at the sacrifice that still keeps a world intact. This is why Dante and Pietro are masters. The two protagonists who play themselves. One consolidated by experience, the other by vocation.
A fine existentialism between being and time that Sbarretti evokes through the voice of nature, of that world nest of man, of the eagle that flies low there without intervening, as is his style as a solitary observer and medium of the message. Absence of structured scripts and screenplay, of a real plot, free dialogues that almost unthinkably take on the sense of an oracle; a production timeline without a strict deadline. Having started filming in August 2021, Sbarretti lets crystalline voices speak, to date, that follow natural predictions and give us the beauty, coherence and perseverance of the subject and object of the shots of an independent cinematography.
Allen Ginsberg said “I consider the image, not the completion of the word, but the word itself that realizes the gaze”. «Well, I approached directing because I was attracted by images, by perspectives, by light» adds Sbarretti.
In early October 2017 Andrea Sbarretti presented me with a trailer filmed in Castelluccio di Norcia, brought to its knees by the 2016 earthquake. It is difficult to get there, the roads are compromised. From October 15 he will be on site, with his Sony HD and Sennheiser MKH 70, to tell the story of the earthquake-stricken areas through the eyes of their inhabitants and their great desire to start over. Of a family of snail farmers. Then it will be winter. The Slow Winter. On October 18 he had already pre-edited the first two scenes with the actors dressed for October at a picnic in the fields of Castelluccio, the plaid, the food, the car, the house. The house left behind. Time that if it had been possible, they would have stopped it on October 29, 2016 before the earthquake that still unloads the town of Castelluccio and Norcia itself.
To anticipate its winter, La botta grossa is released, a road movie shot between Umbria and Marche after the earthquake by Sandro Baldoni with the support of the Lombardia Film Commission, distributed in theaters by Luce CinecittĂ and presented with a preview event by Nanni Moretti at the Nuovo Sacher in Rome in November 2017. A success for an investigative film, Baldoni from this point of view creates magic, but the distribution remains equally limited. The question also arises spontaneously for independent cinema, practically impossible to show it to a significant audience. Cinematographic art, of depth that remains in the shadows; could one have expected in the meantime greater attention to these productions that hope and urge the reconstruction of their territories?
I ask Andrea to tell me about Il lento Inverno. «It is a film set in Norcia, after the earthquake. A very thoughtful film, not sad and does not linger on the misfortunes and pain of the inhabitants. It tells the story of a family that raises snails, Maurizio and his wife. Their son Pier decides to leave Norcia in search of a steady job. Maurizio’s brother-in-law, Benedetto, falls in love with a girl younger than him, as if to exorcise the unknown of the future. I grew up in Valnerina, along the Nera River that marked the times of my adolescence. I am very attached to these places. During the filming of the film Lontano da tutti, I was already thinking of setting the future film in the upper Valnerina, in the areas between Borgo Cerreto, Cerreto di Spoleto, Preci and Norcia. In these territories, the mountains dress everything in light and give unique sensations. I wanted to bring these sensations into a film. The earthquake hadn’t happened yet and after the earthquake I strongly doubted the project, because I was afraid of exploiting the disaster. Then one day, returning to Castelluccio di Norcia, the emotions were so strong that I decided to shoot the film, modifying the original screenplay a little, to adapt it to the new facts. A real film, with camera movements, with actors this time playing a part and with all the inventions, imagination and emotions that the art of cinematography can convey”.
On November 20, The Slow Winter is 17 minutes ready and on December 20, the film is half edited. Almost ready to participate in festivals and be screened in theaters. It happens at the Mario Monicelli in Narni, in May 2019 after a presentation evening at the Politeama Cityplex in Terni, where the film, with the presence of the director and the protagonists Paolo Dimarco Brunelli (Benedetto in the film) and Pierluigi Bernardini, «gets more spectators than the film Stanlio e Ollio (distributed that year)» – says the director Andrea Sbarretti. An audience that confirms the value of the film on the drama filmed in Norcia, and whose proceeds will go to the inhabitants of Norcia, in a post-earthquake that is yet to be overcome.
One of the thirty most beautiful sites in Europe according to the New York Times
It makes you want to escape from the places devastated by the earthquake where life has stopped in the cocoon of winter and spring and rebirth struggle to arrive. A long time of hibernation like apnea: Time? If it had been possible Giacomo would have stopped it on October 29, 2016. The long Winter.
Now the new film. The earthquake of Norcia. And after a reconstruction that is struggling to conclude, time, perhaps, has really stopped on those ruins. Norcia who remains and fights.
[…]
Il ventre della terra trema.
Quel luogo si sbriciola,
custodisce rovine,
e un germoglio d’amore.
Dio, quanto sei bella.
poesia A.M
Daniela Zannetti
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