Country: Italy
Year: 2002
Duration: 52'
In Bangkok, the wife of Alain, a Frenchman from Tunis who owns an Italian restaurant, gets up every morning at four and goes outside the city limits to buy fish (being a good manager, she also supplies many other restaurants besides her own), she returns to her birthplace, one hour away, near the mouth of the river. The fish is abundant, basketfuls are dumped onto the ground, there seem to be tons of fish. And then, as day breaks, other markets, the train-loads of poor people. Everything becomes merchandise, even the people, the buyers and the sellers. Life will never cease being like this. Does one have to die to put an end to it all?
"I watched the big river flow: it allowed me to film it and I even went on it, filming the life that flows outside from many types of boats. It passed before me: with my video camera lens, I captured everyone's life for a few seconds, and then I was already a bit further on and I left them behind" (T. De Bernardi).
Biography
film director
Tonino De Bernardi
(Chivasso, Turin, Italy, 1937) was an underground filmmaker from 1967 to 1983. He shot his first “official” feature in 1987: the film Elettra (based on Sophocles’ tragedy), produced by RAI3, involved the participation of non-professional actors from Casalborgone, where he worked as a middle school teacher until 1992. Viaggio a Sodoma (1988) was the co-winner, with Jean-Luc Godard’s film, of the World Wide Video Festival in Den Hag. He participated at the Venice Film Festival in competition with Appassionate (1999), and in Orizzonti with Médée miracle (2007), starring Isabelle Huppert. A restless filmmaker overflowing with projects, he makes at least a film a year. In 2018, together with his wife Mariella, he’s also protagonist of Teresa Villaverde’s O termómetro de Galileu, presented at TFF, in Onde section, just like many others films of De Bernardis'.
FILMOGRAFIA
Dei (1968-1969), Il quadrato (1971-1972), Il rapporto coniugal parentale (1973-1976), L’io e le aggregazioni (1977-1979), Donne (1980-1982), Viaggio a Sodoma (1988), Piccoli orrori (1994), Fiori del destino (1997), Appassionate (1999), Rosatigre (2000), La strada nel bosco (2001), Farelavita (2001), Lei (2002), Le cinéma dans tous ses états (ep. Terra, cm, 2002), Serva e padrona (2003), Latitudini (2003), Marlene de Sousa (2004), Passato presente (2005), Accoltellati (Accoltellatori) (2006), Médée miracle (2007), Pane/Piazza delle camelie (2008), Butterfly - L’attesa (2010), Ed è così. Circa. Più o meno (2011), Casa dolce casa (2012), Hotel de l’Univers (2013), Jour et nuit - Delle donne e degli uomini perduti (2014), Il sogno dell’India - Quarant’anni dopo (2015), Ifigenia in Aulide (2018), Resurrezione (2019), Ou n'etes vous? (mm, 2022), Universi circoscritti 2 (2022).
Cast
& Credits
Regia, soggetto, sceneggiatura, fotografia: Tonino De Bernardi.
Editor: Fiorella Giovanelli Amico.
Production company: Tonino De Bernardi per Lontane Province Film, via della Consolata 5, 10122 Torino, Italia, tel. +39-011-4366446, e-mail toninodebernardi@libero.it.
Editor: Fiorella Giovanelli Amico.
Production company: Tonino De Bernardi per Lontane Province Film, via della Consolata 5, 10122 Torino, Italia, tel. +39-011-4366446, e-mail toninodebernardi@libero.it.