18° TORINO FILM FESTIVAL
European Perspectives 2000

OCCIDENTE

THE WEST

Country: Italy

Year: 2000

Duration: 95'

Malvina is a Romanian girl who lives near an American military base in Aviano, near Friuli. Her life seems to be like that of any other immigrant girl. But in fact she has lived through an experience that left its mark on her: in 1989 she actively took part in the Romanian Revolution that brought down the Ceauscescu regime. Alberto is a young professor at the local hotel school. One evening he goes to eat at the restaurant where Malvina works as a waitress and is immediately taken with her. He becomes involved in the melancholy and solitary existence of the young woman, attracted by the restlessness and the uneasiness he reads in her eyes. But he is unable to get near her, and limits himself to watching her from afar. Unexpectedly, he will come in contact with a life that is even more somber and desperate than he imagined.

"Occidente is tied to 1989, the year of the Romanian revolution. It is the fruit of a documentary I filmed in Romania, dedicated to the young people who, gun in hand, tried to make a better future for themselves. Later, things weren't easy for the Romanians and some of them made the great leap and came to Western Europe. Including Malvina, the heroine of our film. By observing her life we widen the discussion to how people place their hopes on the future and how they are disappointed by the present, any present. How, in order to move forward, it becomes necessary to cling to the past, to increase its value, to idealize it until it becomes the only motive, the only justification of our existence" (Corso Salani).

FILM DIRECTOR

CAST & CREDITS

Biography

film director

Corso Salani

Corso Salani (Florence, 1961) is both an actor and a director. A graduate of the Istituto di Scienze Cinematografiche in Florence, he directed the short film Danilo for Rai in 1988.The next year he received a prize at RiminiCinema for Voci d’Europa. He performed in The Invisible Wall (1991) and On The dark Continent (1992), directed by Marco Risi. In 1995 he held the seminar Bajo costo, sin costo at the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and in 1999 taught Italian at the Accademia di Lingua e Letteratura Italiana in Warsaw (Poland).

FILMOGRAFIA

Danilo (cm, 1988), Voci d’Europa (1989), Eugen si Ramona (1990), Gli ultimi giorni (1991), Gli occhi stanchi (1995), Cono Sur (1998), Occidente (2000), Corrispondenze private (2002), Palabras (2004), Tre donne in Europa (doc., 2004), C’è un posto in Italia (doc., 2005).

Cast

& Credits

Director: Corso Salani.
Soggetto e sceneggiatura: Corso Salani, Monica Rametta.
Director of photography: Fabio Zamarion.
Scenografia e costumi: Valentina Scalia.
Editor: Luca Benedetti.
Sound: Stefano Campus.
Cast and characters: Agnieszka Czekanska (Malvina), Corso Salani (Alberto), Fabio Sabbioni (Mario), Gianluca Arcopinto (Francesco), Monica Rametta (Rosa).
Production company and Italian distribution: Gianluca Arcopinto per Pablo, via Luca della Robbia 22, 00153 Roma, Italia, tel. +39-06-5745004, fax +39-06-5755242, e-mail zinglos@tin.it