SIMONE RAPISARDA CASANOVA: THE CREATION OF MEANING/LA CREAZIONE DI SIGNIFICATO (2014)



Italy past and present viewed from the mountains

Despite its pretentious-sounding title,* Casanova's hybrid documentary, his second, is a down to earth portrait of a segment of the Apennine mountains of Tuscany. And unlike Micheelangelo Frammartino's Le quattro volte, with which it's been compared and to which it bears a passing resemblance, this doesn't take much figuring out. It's about a place and its relation to modern history as seen glancingly through an individual.

There are various discussions of what this region was like during the War, when Germans were around and also partisans to fight them: it was a theater of conflict, divided by the Gothic Line, as a group of school-kids discuss. And there is a view of one man's life, sixty-something Pacifico Pieruccioni. He's tall and thin and healthy-looking, sort of late Henry Fonda. He maintains a limited farm but has run out of money, so it's going to be sold. He asks one guy to buy it so it doesn't fall into the hands of a scoundrel ("mascalzone"is one word he uses). But it's a friendly German, with a little blond boy named Benjamin, an Italian speaker living in Pisa, who is the buyer.

Along the way there are various chats, Pacifico doing chores in summer shorts, and a crowded table of outdoor diners who sing a rousing song with the full-throated, melodious voices only Italians have.

A more extended conversation that concludes the film deals with the pros and cons of German vs. Italian life. conversation between this gent and Pacifico concludes the film. The German can't understand how the Italians can have consented to be badly governed for twenty years. But he sees the bad government itself as a source of freedom, the lack of tight rules that for him is the appeal of the country compared to is well-run native land. The ugly side of contemporary Italy comes through when Pacifico flip[s on his radio up rising and gets a talk show fully of nasty political invective that makes Fox News commentaries sound mild.

Neil Young of [url="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/creation-meaning-la-creazione-di-726995"]Hollywood Reporter[/url] reviewed this film from Locarno.A follow-up to 2011's first film set in Cuba, The Strawberry Tree. The Sicilian-born filmmaker iS based in Montreal.

The Creation of Meaning/La creazione di significato, 95 mins., a Canada-Italy production, debuted at Locarno 2014 (Best Emerging Director prize there), also showing at Vienna and Rotterdam. It was screened for this review as part of the March 2015 FSLC-MoMA series New Directors/New Films.
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*Casanova explains it: "To make sense of the world that surrounds us we tell stories, even if we know that they are ephemeral as our lives. My film tells a simple story where the viewer is invited to seek out the narrative threads running between past and present and in thus doing so partake in an ephemeral creation of meaning."

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.