Documentary Educational Resources - Geography / Europe / West / Italy / All Films

Rasputin's Shadow

Wed, 14 May 2025 12:48:50 GMT

This short is a sensorial ethnographic exploration of the entangled relationships between humans, other-than-human beings, and technologies that shape social life in communities across the province of Piacenza in Italy. The film traces efforts of care and conservation, while also exposing the tensions and complexities of coexisting with wildlife. This is conveyed audiovisually through an experimental layering of conversation fragments with environmental and animal sounds, unfolding across fields, forests, the Trebbia River, and the industrial outskirts of the city.

Acknowledging the deep interdependence among all beings, it invites viewers to reflect on what it means—and what it might take—to live alongside wolves and other forms of life.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Ethnofest - Athens Ethnographic Film Festival, Greece, 2023

Beijing International Short Film Festival, China, 2023

Freiburger Filmforum, Germany, 2023

International Animal Future Film Festival, UK, 2023

IceDocs, Iceland, 2023

Premiers Regards, France, 2023

Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival, Canada, 2023

Festival Film Dokumenter, Indonesia, 2023

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The Song of Aida

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 11:34:33 GMT

The Song of Aida
Buy Now: $320.00

As a teenager, Aida dreamed of becoming a model and singer. Now in her thirties, she is trapped in an arranged marriage and feels stuck living in a shack in a Roma community in Bari, Italy. She suffers from depression, longs to leave her marriage and return to Romania, where living conditions are better. Shot over a twenty-year period, filmmaker Giovanni Princigalli offers an intimate portrait of one woman’s struggle for emancipation, providing insights into life in the deeply patriarchal and tradition-bound Roma community in Bari, Italy. Princigalli makes it clear from the opening sequence that the Roma community in Bari does not represent that of Roma in other parts of Europe today.

Princigalli was born in Bari, Italy and studied Political Sciences at the University of Bari. His first film Japigia Gagi (Roma Stories) profiles the Bari community as he found it in 2001 and 2002. Song of Aida draws on footage from this early project as well as from visits in 2014 and in the early 2020s, when he focused on Aida’s story. This longitudinal view allows viewers to embrace Aida’s struggle as she finds her voice and independence from her family. The film also shows poetic animations that are used to illustrate the imagination of the protagonists.

“This film is the story of her [Aida’s] struggle for emancipation, independence and a new life outside the Roma camp.” — Giovanni Princigalli, Spring 2024

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

21st edition of the Int'l Human Rights Film Festival (FICDH), Argentina, 2025

Nordic Anthropological Film Association (NAFA) Int'l Ethnographic Film Festival, Norway, 2024

Ethnocineca Int'l Documentary Film Festival, Vienna, 2024

Festival de Cine Etnográfico de Ecuador, Ecuador, 2024

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In My Mother's House

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 12:44:00 GMT

In My Mother's House
Buy Now: $320.00

One day in 2005, Lina Fruzzetti receives a startling email that reads, "If this is your father, we are cousins." There follows a decade-long quest to learn more about her Italian father who died young in Italian ruled Eritrea and her Eritrean mother who does not dwell on the past. Above all, Fruzzetti strives to understand her far-flung African, European, and American family against the backdrop of colonial rule, worlds at war, migration, grief, diasporas, and the global world in which we all live.

In My Mother's House presents the longue durée of Euro-Atlantic, and African societies and histories, from unique points of view, indirectly, in the light of particular events and encounters of a large diasporic American-Eritrean-Italian family. These encounters are intimate and direct so that the viewer feels intrigued while being challenged to learn more. The attention is to individuals and conversations in actual, spontaneous, unrehearsed settings.

The story unfolds chronologically, making the viewer privy to the filmmakers' knowledge. Building on each previous scene unexpected new development occurs in every subsequent segment. From Providence, USA to Carrara (Italy) and Asmara (Eritrea) the scenario turns from conversations in cramped living rooms and events surrounding everyday life in villages and towns, family memories to details of history and politics.

The dramatic ending completes the story but does not resolve the initial puzzle. The film shifts attention from mother to father, to daughter, and in the end to the daughter's quest to find the hidden histories of her large, scattered family with an eye to understanding the meaning of events and the pattern of individual lives. Lina is both protagonist and observer, and through her efforts, we succeed in seeing individual fates play out against a broad canvas of different societies and histories. A spare and often poetic narration does not merely clarify but complements the visual detail and synchronous sound, highlighting the protagonists' experience.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Brown University, 2015

Wesleyan University, 2015

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 2016

Ambedkar University, Delhi, 2016

St Anthony's College, Oxford, 2016

SOAS, University of London, 2016

University of Cardiff, 2016

ISCTE, University of Lisbon, 2016

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Polyphony of Ceriana

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 10:58:00 GMT

Polyphony of Ceriana
Buy Now: $320.00

In Ceriana, a village in West Liguria on the southern slopes of the Italian Alps descending to the Mediterranean coast, people love to sing. Among not less than five choirs, The Compagnia Sacco, founded in 1926, is the most committed to preserve the traditional drone polyphony. Different from Corsican and Sardinian polyphonies (but similar to East Georgian table songs), the local three-part singing is characterized by two solo voices and the drone of the choir.

The American ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax made sound recordings in Ceriana in 1954. He invited The Compagnia Sacco in 1975 to the USA, as a prelude to the 1976 Bicentennial Celebration of Independence. This one-month tour in America was the starting point for its international reputation. However, unlike other choirs of the region, the members of The Compagnia Sacco do not sing under the direction of a conductor and do not limit themselves to giving concerts and producing CDs; they also enjoy very much singing together with friends at many local festivities.

Thus, since its foundation, The Compagnia Sacco draws its repertoire from the local tradition and still presents it to an international audience, and in return the members of the choir also continue to nurture and keep alive the village singing of today.

“The architecture of this remarkable film is built around the traditional song, its social function and its poetic and aesthetic dimension. With his appraising eye, his mastery of silences and his subtle editing of the film, Hugo Zemp succeeds in combining the singers' intimate and collective worlds. Always close to the men of the choir, he allows them to sing without ever interfering, thus making us participate in the inner life of these encounters.”
— Yannick Lebtahi, filmologist, Université Lille 3, France, 2010

“Zemp brings the viewer directly into the musical and social worlds of the Compagnia Sacco, arranging for the protagonists to tell their story and explain what they are doing in apparently spontaneous and natural sequences, without narration, visual intrusion, or artifice of construction. We come away with the feeling of having been there. Yet the film is in fact finely orchestrated, mediated through the film-maker's close observation and study of his subject as well as his extensive experience of filming singing.

The triumph of this film is the way in which Zemp reveals the flow and warmth of traditional group singing, and the individuality of singers as well, as his camera follows the interaction and the cues of the singers throughout a song. In it we see how polyphonic singing at the village level is a continuous creator of harmony, both musical and social, for the participants and those who are absorbed by their performance.”
— Anna Wood, American Anthropologist, 114-4, 2012

“In part because of the lack of unnecessary distraction in the film itself, the viewer is left with a series of vivid and lasting images and a sense of having been granted privileged access into the lives of the singers. The film and Study Guide combined offer a valuable teaching resource with respect both to oral traditions of folk polyphony and to techniques of filmmaking—one that I recommend without reservation. At a less academic level, it is heartening to have this window onto a place where the art of conviviality is still alive and well.”
— Caroline Bithell, University of Manchester Mediterranean Music Studies

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Contro-Sguardi International Anthropological Film Festival, Italy, 2012

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Roma Stories

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 08:59:00 GMT

Roma Stories
Buy Now: $320.00

In Japigia, a neighborhood in the periphery of Bari, Italy, a small community of Roma (Gypsies) carve out an existence in an illegal, ramshackle encampment. The local church has offered them a piece of land with prefabricated houses, but the town hall is preventing this offer due to their own plans for a future a railway station. Continually in danger of evacuation and making a living primarily by begging for money, the Roma still manage to foster a strong community and lively social atmosphere.

Living for a one year within the community, the filmmakers extract both the emotional and anthropological details from this vibrant microcosm which remains largely hidden and ignored by its own city. Seventeen-year-old Dorina is released from an institute for minors and soon married amid much negotiating and festivities. Dainef waits for the arrival of his daughter from Romania. Young Aida dreams of becoming a model, and eleven-year-old Laura would rather go beg with her mother than go to school. Aida is taken away by Serbian Roma, and her father must decide how to take action. And throughout are the songs which were written over the course of the filming - poetic illustrations of their lives and problems on a contentious and desolate land, but a still a land where one is born, grows up, and dreams.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival, Taiwan, 2013

Second Prize, International Art Gispy Competition of Lanciano, 2003

Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival, Canton, China, 2003

Documentary & Ethnographic Film Festival of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2003

First Documentary Film Festival of Le Mans, France, 2003

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