Country: Italy
Year: 1970
Duration: 60'
migration This is the third and most extensive part of the cycle Eryngium. The essential theme is the migrations that have populated our world, starting from ancient India and descending into Greece and Western Europe. The film’s conceit is that this movement is still in progress. The characters are shown in transit, as if they were part of an ancient caravan. While they move they make up myths and they worship the Great Goddess, impersonating her story. Thus she appears as young girl and mature woman, and is evoked in the stories and music given on the soundtrack: the Virgin of Bach’s Magnificat, the Sulamite of Stockhausen’s Song of Solomon (“I am black but comely”), tales by Herodotus, Kafka, Villon (as set to music by Ezra Pound). A section is devoted to the idea of celebration, where the migrants get together to worship the life-principle. Later the film moves back to the individual and solitude. “I look at my fellow travelers, whom I meet in the course of the journey. A young couple of hitchhikers, Fulbright students, a poet visiting from Germany. The background is in part Rome (scenes shot in the excavations at Ostia or of the Forum, where migrating artists painted frescos, which are also shown). Migrants produce art and stories. The opening scenes were shot in Florence, the little girl, called Alba, is the daughter of an Italian mother and an African father. Thus genes are transmitted across the continents, they are the essential migrants. The overall influence, however, is India, pictures of which taken by me during a trip in 1969 are shown towards the beginning. I suppose the whole thing could be seen as a Mystery Play.”
Biography
film director
Massimo Bacigalupo
Massimo Bacigalupo (Rapallo, Genoa, Italy, 1947) produced his first film work for the local Amateur Film Club. For some years he helped organize the Rapallo International Amateur Film Festival. In 1966 his feature Quasi una tangente was awarded first prize in the Montecatini Film Festival. Bacigalupo, who was nineteen-year-old at the time, remembers that he was sitting in the audience with Lillian Gish and Anita Loos, who happened to be visiting Montecatini (Lillian was a friend of Massimo’s parents). Early on, through his personal acquaintance with poet Ezra Pound, Bacigalupo met filmmakers and associates of the New American Cinema, among them Guy Davenport, Stan Brakhage, Gregory Markopoulos, Jonas Mekas, and Abbott Meader. In 1970 he prepared an Italian translation of Brakhage’s Metaphors on Vision. He brought to Rapallo in 1964 a selection of American films, among them works by Ron Rice and Maya Deren, which made a lasting impression. In 1966-71 he was a university student in Rome, where he was a founding member of the Italian Filmmakers’ Cooperative, and was involved in producing and distributing independent films. In 1968 he shot 200 Feet for March 31, an uncut and silent 8mm film-happening. He went on in 1969-70 to create Eringio, a series of four films running over two hours. The title refers to Dürer’s self-portrait, and this film quartet amounts to a collective self-portrait of the student and art world in Italy at the time. The longest film of the series, Migration, a celebration of the Great Mother and her many incarnations, was premiered at the 1970 London Film Festival. Bacigalupo travelled with a showcase of Italian underground films to Denmark, Sweden, Germany (1970), and later Spain (1974) and England (Tate Gallery, 1983). He enrolled as a graduate student at Columbia University, receiving his Ph.D. in American literature in 1975. Warming Up, a color film shot in Italy and America, was premiered at the Anthology Film Archives, NYC, on Bacigalupo’s 26th birthday, April 20, 1973. In 1975 he shot Postcards from America, a dream travelogue, and Into the House, an homage to his American mother’s family. Later Bacigalupo has been chiefly active as a scholar, critic and educator. He is Professor of American Literature at the University of Genoa and has received numerous awards for his work as a translator, chiefly of English and American poetry. He lives in Rapallo.
FILMOGRAFIA
filmografia/filmography
Lilan (cm, 1965), Quasi una tangente (mm, 1966), Ariel loquitur (mm, 1967), 60 metri per il 31 marzo (cm, 1968), Versus (cm, 1968), Her (cm, 1968), The Last Summer (cm, 1969), Né bosco (una conversazione) (cm 1970), Migrazione (mm, 1970), Paphos (cm, 1970), Coda (cm, 1970), Warming Up (mm, 1973), Into the House (cm, 1975), Cartoline dall’America (cm, 1975).
Cast
& Credits
regia/director
Massimo Bacigalupo
interpreti/cast
Shahla Arbabi, Piero Bargellini, John Cardale, Mariella De Bernardi, Tonino De Bernardi, Jacques Defert, Pia Epremian, Dilys Ferguson, Luisa Musante, Martine Rog, Bruce Saylor, Alba Vivante, Charis Vivante, Andreas Weiland, Susan Winterbottom
