Michele Vietri film director and actor
A chi tanto a chi niente (2006)
Storia possibile di un critico di provincia
(The possible story of a provincial Critic)
Director Notes
“A chi tanto e a chi niente” (2006) (“Unacknoledged merit”) is the possible story of a communist critic living in a medium size-town with very little money and lots of enthusiasm and idealism. This docu-film is also the story of the ideas and of the persons envolved in this special human, political and artistic “adventure”. In the first place, it is the story of Camillo Marino, an energetic journalist, critic and film “lover”, who devoted all his life to “his” film festival. And it is also the story of Giacomo D' Onofrio, a poet-journalist and friend of Camillo. It is also the story of many ideas and the impossibilities or contradictions they carry to: the request of a cinema “different” from the ` “official” and traditional one both in content and form; above all, the attempt to elaborate “new” ways for the films in their relationship to culture and society. And, therefore, it is the story of men like Pasolini, Culprit, Zavattini and other “cineasti”, critics and intellectuals who supported the “Laceno D'Oro” and agreed actively with Marino’s initiatives. It is also the poetical story of a provincial, firm and long-lasting atmosphere, that it is faced and compared with a cultured and involuntarily excluding èlite, a world committed and the same time distant. It is a surveying on what the Laceno D' Oro represented in all its aspects, including those who opposed to it, and it is also the (probably) unforgettable memory of a very special “historical” period for the town and its inhabitants.
The repertorio of sequences and photos of the “Laceno d’Oro” that covers nearly the entire visual documentation of various editions of the festival comes in part from RAI, for the film fragments, and for the other parts from the many private and public archives; other sequences of varied origin concern the “acclimatization” in various years and is related to important events of the town and the persons: the earthquake in 1980 and politics, the football achievements for the town football club and its failures, and so on. Together to these documents, there are the letters that Marino sent to and received from all the personalities mentioned, which are to be found in the archives (particularly interesting is the correspondence in the archives ` Zavattini' of Reggio Emilia) and the extracts from his essays. Beyond these elements, new images of the territory as it is now were shot and, last but certainly not least, the interviews to the many participants to the story of the film who are all well worth mentioning:
Mario Monicelli
Cesare Zavattini
Gillo Pontecorvo
Carlo Lizzani
Giuliano Montaldo
Ettore Scola
Tinto Brass
Florestano Vancini
Ansano Giannarelli
Vittorio Martinelli
Claudio G.Fava
Giampiero Brunetta
Marcello Gatti
Vincenzo Siniscalchi
As the documentary represents an instrument to understand more of it all, it is useful, nonetheless, to explain shortly some historical facts and to focus on the “construction” of the film.
The idea of the festival originated from Pier Paolo Pasolini, invited in
`59 by Marine Camillo to visit the picturesque villages and beautiful places
of the province of Avellino and above all the Laceno lake in the plateau
of Bagnoli. In those mountains, in those years, the local “peasant”
community embodied the dream of an “authenticity” that, at the
beginning of the economic boom and of consumerism, represented nearly a
rarity (a sort of longing) for the director of the film "Accattone”
(“Beggar"). Pasolini realized that he had to move film-making
from the places of consumption of the cultural present time to that idyllic
South . And, even if after his first years of collaboration he did not really
carry out that idea, he kept in touch with Marino suggesting also some choices
and invitations.
In the same way, there was the intention of the founders of the festival,
Marino and Giacomo D' Onofrio – “to redeem the boors”
( just to use the organizers’s very phrase) through the cultural instrument
of the cinema in a province and a city in which the “masses”
were basically “enslaved” to the political power and all “framed”
in a “do-nothing” policy also because of an almost total absence
of special cultural opportunities that could allow “la gente irpina”
to get out of a situation of absolute “marginalization”.
Later on, in the ‘60s, the “Laceno d’Oro” became also, in the age of the so-called Cold War, a cultural bridge with the European east, so carrying out one of the few contacts in Italy with the films produced beyond the iron curtain and, out of Europe, with the cinematographies of underdeveloped nations. In the early 70s, the partnership with Cesare Zavattini, Riccardo Napolitano, a documentarist and promoter of interesting initiatives in Rome and Naples, and Camillo Marino began. The three met many times in Avellino and planned the creation of the ' Cinegiornali del Proletariato' (Cinepapers for proletarians). In some letters, Zavattini suggested the essential bases of this initiative.
The avellinese review would have had to be part of this design. Never completed, though. Yet, the acknowledged importance of the Festival, thanks to Camillo Marino’s intuition and insight, was in its continuous discovery and promotion of new cineasti (directors, actors, actresses, producers etc.) many of whom would continue with excellent careers in the cinema; no doubt, the magazine “Cinemasud” offered an occasion to young critics thanks to their generosity. Then, in the following years, the Laceno D' Oro gave voice to the directors, actors or producers who had to endure censorship. The most famous cases were the film by Brass "The Key" and the South American films whose directors were victims of the fascist censorship in their own countries, just to mention a few.
As it is easy to understand, Camillo Marino always tried, with a fresh inventiveness and a searched sense of “plannig”, to refuse and reject the danger of an intellectual marginalization which might come from his deliberate choice to live and work in that peculiar territory. And this is obvious from the very beginning of the story that I tried to show in my docu-film: in the letter to Pier Paolo Pasolini in which he invited the poet to Avellino Camillo wrote"... the fever that comes when you notice that the province risks to choke you, to kill your better hopes... ". And this intimate desperation had its grotesque implications if one considers how extraordinary the “character” Camillo Marino was . But this melancholy for me has the taste of poetry and not of the incompleteness, of the unavoidable rather than of defeat. From this point of view, it is even too obvious to refer to the character of Nicholas Palumbo di C', perhaps one of director Ettore Scola’s favourite characters, interpreted by a great Stefano Satta Flores, who interpreted this journalist of province that loves films and that is clearly inspired by Marino.
The truth is like a great splash of icy water. The festival had always to fight with the chronical lack of money, the political boycotting of the local administrators and their “powerful” meanness. The survival could be guaranteed only by turning the Laceno d' Oro into a cultural Agency. But, to this request, the several political administratiors always showed either a discouraging and disheartening lack of interest or proposals which would only be exploited to the advantage of those politicians who opposed to the ideas of Marino. Unfortunately, all that led to the definite end of this Festival, one of oldest of Italy, in 1989. It was its XXVIIIth edition.
Michele Vietri
