Vittorio De Seta

Documentary about the Soviet film director and his changing fortunes during the Stalin years.

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This portrait of a film director unlike any other attempts to capture the essence of Vittorio de Seta’s rapport with the humble people he filmed and elegantly brought to Cinema Scope’s big screen in color from the 1950s onwards. From his home in Calabria, the film director looks back over his epic films.

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Until the 1970s, Italian cinema dominated the international scene, even competing with Hollywood. Then, in just a few years, came its rapid decline, the flight of our greatest producers, a crisis among the best writer-directors, the collapse of production. But what are the true causes and circumstances of this decline? In an attempt to provide an answer to this question, Di Me Cosa Ne Sai strives to depict this great cultural change. Begun as a loving examination of Italian cinema, the film transformed into a docu-drama that alternates between interviews with the great names of the past and fragments of cultural and political life of the last 30 years. It is a travel diary that shows Italy from north to south, through movie theatres; television-addicted kids; Berlusconi and Fellini; shopping centers; TV news editors; stories of impassioned film exhibitors and directors who fight for their films; and interviews with itinerant projectionists and great European directors.

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By tracing the places of Vittorio De Seta films and looking for people who had contact with him, as the Cozzo Disi sulfur miners, Ganzirri swordfish fishermens and shepherds who attended in drama Banditi a Orgosolo, the documentary focuses on great change started in local cultures of the Southern Italy from 1945. The film includes an interview with De Seta, conversations with the film directors Luciano Tovoli, Franco Maresco, Gianfranco Pannone, writers Vincenzo Consolo, Goffredo Fofi, Eugenio Turri and the critic Marco Gazzano. Set in Calabria, Sardinia and Sicily, the film was shot in 35mm film and digital, contains stock footage and images taken by De Seta.

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Alan Lomax (1915-2002) was a song collector who recorded ordinary people, who gave their heart and soul in front of his microphone. The film maker decides to search for people Lomax recorded, travelling through Europe in an old Volkswagen. His journey leads him past desolate Scottish islands, through the withered interior of Spain and to isolated Italian mountain villages. The search is combined with conversations with colleagues and friends of Lomax. Throughout the movie, every now and then we return to a frail but happy 86-year old Lomax. In this passionate and musical roadmovie we slowly discover why folk music can be so pretty and what could have once possessed the legendary Alan Lomax.

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Interview by Ciprì and Maresco with Vittorio De Seta and Fofi.

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In this documentary, giants of italian cinema such as Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini and Zavattini talk about the importance of cinema after WW2, and about huge moments of social rebellion. This movie gives the floor to the creators of italian neorealism.

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Collective film for the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with 30 directors each helming a segment about one of the 30 articles of the Declaration.

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The story of a young Senegalese man who treks the Sahara, takes an immigrant boat bound for Italy, the attempts to eke out a living there - finally deciding to return to his native place. Vittorio De Seta's first fiction feature since 1969.

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Vittorio De Seta's documentary about the Calabria, revisiting the territory he documented in I Dimenticati in 1959.

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Divided into four episodes, it is a film about the passage of time and mutations. De Seta returns to his home Sicily, where he shot his famous first short films in the 1950s, in search of the vestiges of a culture erased by the economic, social and cultural policies of the post-war period.

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Vittorio De Seta presents the drama of the Vietnamese refugees who arrived in the great Asian metropolis.

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In a school on the extreme outskirts of Rome, a young teacher, instead of neglecting his half-empty classroom, decides to tackle the problem looking for the children who do not attend classes.

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In a school on the extreme outskirts of Rome, a young teacher, instead of neglecting his half-empty classroom, decides to tackle the problem looking for the children who do not attend classes.

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When her husband returns from his work abroad with a guest, a young girl, his wife suspects a liaison. She leaves her home. Her boss takes her to the Côte d'Azur. They get closer during the long voyage and the man invites her to his marital home.

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A young writer descends into madness. Alienated, neurotic, and plagued by guilt, Michele retreats from reality, loses interest in work, and comes to the brink of suicide before being sent to an asylum for shock therapy. Escaping from the asylum, Michele returns to his boyhood home, where he learns the reasons for his present mental state.

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A Sardinian peasant is implicated in the murder of a policeman and, although innocent, he doesn’t give himself up, lacking faith in the judicial system and fearing that he may lose his sheep while awaiting trial.

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The subsea well constructed in Gela in 1959 by Eni was the first of its kind in Europe. The facility consisted of two interdependent complexes: a steel platform on the sea floor and a support ship. The very viscous oil gushed from the Sicilian land to flow to collection centers.

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Vittorio De Seta travels to Alessandria del Carretto, a small town in the province of Cosenza, to capture a unique celebration known as the “Feast of Silver.”

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Against the background of flocks of sheep at pasture, mules walking down unpaved roads, tractors in the fields, and isolated figures in a deserted village, a caption explains that Barbagia is a vast region in Sardinia; Orgosolo, Oliena and Mamoiada are villages of shepherds and the men spend most of the year far away, with their flocks. This is why the houses and the children are entrusted to the women, who cut the wood, work the fields and prepare bread, shepherds’ bread.

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The striking landscapes of rural Sardinia provide the backdrop to this lyrical look at the hardscrabble lives of the region’s shepherds in winter.

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The unpredictable nature of the sea governs the world of Sicilian fishermen as they work, rest, and seek refuge from a storm.

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Filming amid the flaxen wheat fields of Sicily, Vittorio De Seta documents the everyday rituals of farmers during harvest time.

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Sicily, Granitola, 1955. At the first light of dawn, the fishermen set out in their boats for open water, timing the rhythm of their oars to murmured chants. They set their nets in the sea, regulate the cords, organize the boats in a square. The men’s work becomes increasingly harder as the tuna are hoisted onto the boats, wriggling, beating their tails until death arrives and the water is tinged with blood.

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A short anthropological documentary from 1954. Director De Seta was fortunate enough to document swordfish fishing; by 1956 it no longer existed.

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Harshness and beauty exist side by side in this look at the lives of sulfur mine workers and their families in southern Italy.

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A short film which retells the story of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection.

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The first light of dawn. The sound of a boat and the screech of birds fill the wide expanse of sea. Black rocks emerge from the water, the “sciara” – the volcanic scoria – of Stromboli, the underwater sulfurous emanations, the layers of reddish rock eroded by the sea. The roar of the volcano can be heard, the flames and the liquid lava are thrown skyward. As nature unleashes itself, the fishermen row toward the shore, the sheep stray and the women return home.

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Robert and his fiancée Lucienne were due to go on vacation together to a tented village in Sicily. Robert is forced to postpone his trip and only joins Lucienne a few days later, taking advantage of the departure of a following group. During the train journey, he befriends Thérèse, a young Sicilian living in Paris, who wants to make a pilgrimage to the land of her ancestors. Lucienne is away from the camp when Robert arrives, so he can continue to see Thérèse, and little by little they discover that they love each other. When Lucienne returns, an explanation and reconciliation take place, then Robert changes his mind and, with the vacations over, leaves Lucienne alone to live in Sicily with Thérèse, who wants to stay in her family's homeland.

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