01 Aug ITALO CALVINO, LO SCRITTORE SUGLI ALBERI

Special Screening 2023

ITALO CALVINO, LO SCRITTORE SUGLI ALBERI
THE WRITER IN THE TREES

by Duccio Chiarini
Italy, France, 2023, 76′, colour
Screenplay: Duccio Chiarini, Sofia Assirelli, Claudia Lachina

Calendar programming:

Tuesday 29/08 – 06.30pm

Special Screening

Book on giornatedegliautori.com

On the 100th anniversary of his birth, this documentary on Italo Calvino highlights one of his most celebrated accomplishments, The Baron in the Trees. Using the novel to provide a unique perspective on the relationship between the author’s work and his own times. Thanks to recently discovered archives, the film offers a fresh look at the most important Italian writer of the twentieth century.

«Together with the screenwriter Sofia Assirelli, we decided to use The Baron in the Trees as the narrative framework of the film, drawing a parallel between the adventures of the novel’s protagonist Cosimo and Italo Calvino’s career. The connection is not just the coincidence of the publication of the novel in 1957 and Calvino’s break with the Italian Communist Party a few months later; it may also be argued that the character and the author have other things in common. Calvino spent his childhood under the trees at the Villa Meridiana, which recalls the Baron’s Ombrosa residence, but it’s the author’s maturity that shares many features of Cosimo di Rondò, who takes to the trees to gain the right distance for observing the world, yet remains no less empathetic or involved in the social and political issues of his day for it.». [Duccio Chiarini]

London Film School graduate Duccio Chiarini made several short films before he directed the documentary Hit the Road, Nonna, which premiered at Giornate degli Autori in 2011. His first fiction feature, Short Skin, was produced by the Biennale College Cinema and premiered at the 71st Venice Film Festival in 2014. The film was also selected for the 65th Berlinale, where it was nominated for a Crystal Bear in the Generation section. In 2016, Chiarini developed his second feature film, The Guest, at the Cannes Cinéfondation Residence and the Torino Film Lab. The film premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in 2018. In 2020, he directed his second documentary, The Glass Eye, which premiered at the 62nd Festival dei Popoli, where it won the award for best documentary.