29° TORINO FILM FESTIVAL
ITALIANA.DOC - LEZIONE DI CINEMA
PALAZZO DELLE AQUILE
by Stefano Savona, Alessia Porto, Ester Sparatore
Country: France, Italy
Year: 2011
Duration: 128'
Palermo, the autumn of 2007. For one month, eighteen families who have lost their homes occupy Palazzo delle Aquile, the city’s town hall. Right from the very first day, the challenge is clear: houses in exchange for the Palazzo. The private and the public dimensions overlap, becoming physically and symbolically a single space in which personal needs and political power dialogue. “All the people were gathered in one place, the palace which had belonged to the old viceroys of Sicily, the headquarters of power and local democracy. By occupying the town hall, normal men found themselves identifying with their rulers, mimicking their role. But at the same time they had to truly create political relations: by pretending to be someone else, for the first time in their life they experienced politics in a place that had been created for that very purpose. A short circuit was created and this ‘extraordinary condition’ reflected the attraction for politics and the discovery of this sphere of existence by people who normally live on the fringes of society.”
Biography
film director
Alessia Porto
Alessia Porto co-wrote the documentary Questa è la mia terra and edited the book Millenovecento, a collection of orally-transmitted stories based on Il pane di San Giuseppe (2009), an audiovisual archives of peasant society in Sicily.
FILMOGRAFIA
Alessia Porto:
Questa è la mia terra (coregia/codirectors Francesco Amato, Daniel Baldotto, cm, doc., 2003).
Stefano Savona, Alessia Porto, Ester Sparatore:
Palazzo delle aquile (doc., 2011).
Stefano Savona
Stefano Savona (Palermo, Italy, 1969 has made numerous video installations, including La città infinita (2003) and D-Day (2005), and various documentaries, such as Piombo fuso (2009) that won the special jury prize at Cinéastes du présent at Locarno and the Grand prix du documentaire at Annecy. In 2010, he presented Spezzacatene at the Torino Film Festival.
FILMOGRAFIA
Stefano Savona:
Storia di Palermo dalle origini all’età romana (mm, doc., 2000), Alfabe, abbecedario curdo (cm, doc., 2001), Un confine di specchi (doc., 2002), Primavera in Kurdistan (doc., 2006), Sulla stessa barca (cm, doc., 2007), Il tuffo della rondine (mm, doc., 2008), Piombo fuso (doc., 2009), Spezzacatene (doc., 2010).
Stefano Savona, Alessia Porto, Ester Sparatore:
Palazzo delle aquile (doc., 2011).
Ester Sparatore
Ester Sparatore has made numerous short films and video installations, including Asile (2004) and Fuori luogo (2005), and she was director of photography for Il Pane di San Giuseppe.
FILMOGRAFIA
Ester Sparatore:
Asile (cm, 2004), Fuori luogo (cm, 2005).
Stefano Savona, Alessia Porto, Ester Sparatore:
Palazzo delle aquile (doc., 2011).
Cast
& Credits
regia, fotografia, suono/directors, cinematography, sound
Stefano Savona, Alessia Porto, Ester Sparatore
montaggio/film editing
Ilaria Fraioli
produttori/producers
Penelope Bortoluzzi, Stefano Savona
produzione, vendita all’estero/production, world sales
Picofilms
