Motherland

La terramadre

(Italy, 2008, 122 mins)

35mm

North American Premiere

PROD: Salvatore Pitruzzella
SCR: Evelina Santangelo, Nello La Marca, Sandro Dieli
CAM: Tarek Ben Abdallah
ED: Maurizio Spadaro
MUS: Giuseppe Milici
Cast: Michele Di Rosa, Youssif Latif Jarallah, Felice Melluso, Francesco Teresi, Crocetta Canta

Echoing the Sardinian setting of VIFF's Sonetàula, Motherland is set as far away from tourists as it is possible to get in Italy. It's fascinating to know that this was a production of the local government of a small coastal town in the wilder part of  Sicily, and to hear what the town's mayor, the film's producer, had to say about it: "Palma di Montechiaro could be considered an emblematic city of Italy's South, full of contradictions, a combination of needs and frustrated ideals, beauty and decadence, sluggish economic factors and chaotic changes... The film's leading protagonist is Palma di Montechiaro, with its magnificent territory and tragic problems that, in some ways, serve as a metaphor for the uncertain and obscure present. So many of its offspring continue to escape, trying to find a better life elsewhere, while so many of the world's children, in order to escape a greater hell, keep on coming, as if they were landing in America. Director Nello La Marca--and the mayor!--have taken great chances in realizing this project. For the aim in reconstructing the individual stories and collective images of the townspeople has evidently been to not only be true to their inner experience but to sanctify their space and objects. Some of the images have an intensely hued sculptural beauty that is truly extraordinary. "Motherland was conceived as an experiment to tell a story about a territory... We have told the stories of Palma people going beyond any principle of representative realism, any canon of objectivity..."--Nello La Marca

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