Country: Italy
Year: 1992
Duration: 10 film d


A continuation of the work begun with the first series of 10 Italian Intervals, these new European Intervals present a voyage through Europe with its contradictions. They use and profit from the set form of the "interval" to propose new ways of using the television medium. The places shown are Prague, Istanbul, Moscow, Barcelona, Belfast, Lourdes, Liverpool, the Low Countries, Berlin, and the Ruhr.

"The purpose of European Intervals is not to show the places and cities chosen to be covered, but to manage to tell their reality 'emotionally'. This reality is not only made up of buildings, squares, dancehalls on the cities' edges, and banks. It is also made of faces, gestures, and political and social contradictions which translate into political factions and thus affect the face, the urban development and the 'atmosphere' of the cities. At this point the problem is surely 'how' to express and underscore these contrasts, but there is also a problem in the reason 'why' we would do this and in how we would steer our work correctly, reach the public, and ask them to share their tastes and opinions with us. In this sense we believe surely and without modesty to have managed to use suggestions which come from the film while always thinking of the medium of television. We use its stereotypes and try to interact 'by contrast' with what comes before and after the Interval. Now the Interval is no more a simple pause, but a story, an evocation, a 'turistic' guide in the understanding of the reality or realities involved. It seemed to us that the problem thus became that of finding the new languages through which we could work creatively in a medium which had always used words, pedagogic and pedantic explanations, and false objectivity as the distinguishing features for seizing the authority to handle reality. The Interval uses only images and music, sounds, and simple written lines, but could hypothetically treat any argument, even those usually covered 'in the way of TV news'. Using television differently seems to us definitely to be an extremely stimulating goal. This is true despite all the problems that rose up against us in our attempt to involve a national television network in projects that were hardly orthodox, and despite problems in managing and organizing products of this type without a mammoth apparatus or structure. One thing, however, is sure. The greatest stimulus (besides the need to tell a story) comes from the feeling that there are electronic prairies which are still almost unexplored, which present completely new possibilities of communication, and which allow for 'strong' and hardly conventional signs". (Pastore & Cocito)

"It's a little weird I admit it but, to be sincere, its really the thing that I liked the best lately the Raitre Interval. Practically speaking, the Raitre people substituted the old images of Italian monuments with as just as many images black and white moving images of a less conventional Italy, one less of the postcards. For example, there is: Palermo, the mayor. And, look, you can see the arrival of the mayor at city hall, with his escort, the bulletproof cars, etc. Or, there is Rimini and its empty beach in October, a bit melancholy and opaque with its left overs from the flow of the tourists. Or, still, there is Venice not Saint Marks Square any more but an internal canal full of garbage. All in all, a more tormented, but also more realistic, vision of this country". (Gabriele Salvatores, from an interview in "Amica")

Biography

film director

Cocito & Pastore

Alessandro Cocito and Luca Pastore (Turin, 1962 and 1963) have been active for about the past ten years in the field of audiovisual communication. In the field of television, they created and produced Nuovi Intervalli for RAI Tre in 1989 - a series of ten .short films on cities and places in Italy - as well as a new 1993 series of ten short films on Europe. Over the years they also have been active in the documentary field, producing several documentaries, including the recent Senza Titolo, a film on the November, 1994, floods in the Langhe as well as IRA, a report on the Northern Ireland issue as told through the experiences of an IRA militant. Recently they have been working in the field of commercials, including those made for companies such as FIAT Auto, Pagine Gialle and Henkel. It is also involved in the making of music videos for groups such as Africa Unite, Fluxus and Maoelarivoluzione.

FILMOGRAFIA

Adeu Dalí (1988), Jean Tinguely: una magia più forte della morte (1989), Intervalli italiani (1989), Uno e quattordici (1989), Gruppi d'Italia (1991), Aspettando la pubblicità (1991), Intervalli europei (1992), IRA (1993), Senza titolo (1994), Welat/Patria (1996), Biennale dei Giovani Artisti dell'Europa e del Mediterraneo (1996), Subacquea (1997).

Cast

& Credits

Regia, sceneggiatura e fotografia: Pastore & Cocito.
Music: Andrea Costa, Mauro Tavella, Adriano Cresto.
Sound: Bartolomeo Paradiso.
Production company and Italian distribution: Legovideo s.n.c. per Raitre, via Rosmini 13, Torino, tel. 6503909.
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