La vela incantata

Set at the beginning of the 30s, the film is about two brothers who bring the cinema to the squares of the villages around the Po Valley. It talks about the desire of the oldest brother to go back to his hometown, to get back his past loves, to be reintegrated in an environment that had previously driven him away; it talks about the passion of the other brother, a teenager from Turin, for a life made of wondering, of open spaces, the “enchanted sail” of the screen. A struggle between fantasy and reality, on the dramatic background of a conformist society during the transition from silent shadows to the revolution of sound. But that’s where their paths start to diverge: on the verge of a choice, of a meditation on themselves which becomes also a meditation on their times and on the society they live in.

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala - English translation Francesca Sala

It is the rediscovery of my childhood through the enchantment and love for the old pictures shown on the big cinematographic canvas.
It’s a consideration on the truth of the screen, on its morality, on its ambiguity. It’s the need to look beyond the myths built by the film, which offers them to us in order to look for a unheeded reality (not only on the outside, but also on the inside). It’s an attempt to clarify the work I’ve done in years (my dichotomy, the two sides I have in doing cinema, to understand them and make them live together): on the one hand the urge to give, with a docu-film, an ever-changing reality, on the other the use of a fantasy to talk about my dreams, nightmares, desires, fears… But reality is not always filtered by a personal eye, so it is a “documented” point of view, as Jean Vigo used to say. And shouldn’t fantasy feed itself with what surrounds us, to become an interpretation of reality?
What’s important is that the image counts as a tool of knowledge, both as document or show, current news or story, report or poetry.
Gianfranco Mingozzi

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala - English translation Francesca Sala

Director: Gianfranco Mingozzi.
Plot: Lucia Drudi Demby, Gianfranco Mingozzi.
Screenplay: Tommaso Chiaretti, Lucia Drudi Demby, Gianfranco Mingozzi.
Director of photography: Luigi Verga (35mm, colore).
Art director: Guido Iosia.
Editor: Alfredo Muschietti.
Music: Nicola Piovani.
Cast and characters: Massimo Ranieri (Angelo), Paolo Ricci (Tonino), Monica Guerritore (Anna), Giulia Fossà (Alberta), William Berger (Giovanni), Nives (Lina Sastri), Remo Remotti (Andrea), Antonio Marsina, Rick Battaglia, Giulio Federici.
Production company: Enzo Porcelli per l'Antea Cinematografica e la RAI, Radiotelevisione Italiana, Rete 2.