A Sicily of the early twentieth century between beauties, ancient crafts and tragedies at the center of an interesting retrospective as part of the forty-third edition of the Pordenone Silent Cinema Days, a prestigious event directed by Jay Weissberguntil October 12th in the Friulian city.
An essential event for those who love the seventh art, the festival offers an exhibition curated by Elena Beltrami (Cineteca del Friuli) and Gabriele Perrone (National Cinema Museum of Turin)to inaugurate a multi-year project dedicated to the Italian regions. A film excursus with documentaries (some of unknown author and date) and a single fiction title, created in collaboration with archives from Italy, South America and other European countries to deal with the themes “Landscape”, “Arts, crafts and current affairs”, ” Volcano, earthquake and storms” through the sections of the same name.
We begin with the focus on nature and architecture starting from “Sicilia illustrata” by the Turin-born Ambrosio (1907), where the camera of Giovanni Vitrotti highlights the beauties of Messina, Taormina and Cyclops Island. Also from Turin, the Tiziano Film titles “Through Sicily”, “Nella conca d’oro” and “The clay industry in Sicily”, made by Piero Marelli in 1920. A look from the inside with “Un giorno a Palermo” (1914) of the local production Lucarelli Film. Focus on the most representative places of the Sicilian capital in “Documentary on Palermo and Sicily”, dated between 1925 and 1929. Sicilian beauties are also at the center of the titles “Palermo und der Monte Pellegrino”, “Il Mare di Palermo”, “Monreale” and “Journey to Southern Italy from Syracuse to Taormina”.
The story of the trades, introduced by Marelli’s works, leads to the second section of the retrospective, with the productions of Pathé, a giant of French cinema, on the manufacture of carts (“Fabrication des Charrettes Siciliennes” of 1910) and the extraction of salt ( “Exploitation du sel en Sicile” of 1912). This last theme is also at the center of “San Giuliano and the salt pans of Trapani” (1910), a Cines documentary discovered this year in Buenos Aires by the scholar Lorena Bordigoni and restored for the occasion. From Pathé also the story of the sumptuous funeral of a very rich man from Trecastagni, in the Catania area (“Dispositions testamentaires”, 1927), of the “Targa Florio” car race on the Madonie (“Course internationale d’automobiles”, 1923) and of the tournament medieval for the thousand years of Palermo (“Un grand tournoi médiéval à l’occasion du millenaire de la foundation de Palerme et Sicile”, 1925). The extraction from the asphaltic rocks of the Contrada Tabuna (Ragusa), started in 1917 by the Roman company ABCD (Asphalt, Bitumen, Tar and Derivatives), with a nod to the tragic condition of the Sicilians involved in the enterprise, at the center of the industrial film ” The large Italian industries. Asphalt mines in Sicily”, restored by the Istituto Luce.
The island’s natural disasters as the theme of the third and final section of the festival, with four of the eight films in the program dedicated to the 1908 Messina and Reggio Calabria earthquake: “Earthquake of Messina” and “Construction of barracks in Messina”, both directed by Luca Comerio in 1909, “Tremblemant de Terre Messine” (1909) and “Messina che risorge” (1910). The destructive force of the sea is instead at the center of the 1926 Pathé production “Palerme, Sicile. Une formidable tempête a battu la côte Sicilienne occasionnant de nombreux dégâts” and “Sicile.Plusieurs navires ont été jetés à la côte au cours des dernières tempêtes”. Dedicated to the volcanic eruptions of Etna “Vulkane in Tätigkeit” and “L’éruption de l’Etna”, both from 1910. The excursus is completed by the 1919 fiction film “L’Appel du Sang” by Louis Mercanton, taken from novel “The Call of the Blood” by Robert Hichens and set, like the original text, in Taormina.