Country: Switzerland
Year: 1971
Duration: 55'
After his wife dies in Italy, Giuseppe emigrates to Switzerland to work
as a seasonal factory worker and takes his six-year-old son with him. But the
country's workers statute makes no provision for family reunification and,
despite the man's requests, the child is denied a resident's permit. With other
colleagues, Giuseppe begins a mobilization to claim his rights. The most famous
movie by Alvar Bizzarri, a factory worker-director who emigrated to
Switzerland; the movie is shot in Super8 and mixes fiction and documentary,
evoking the spirit of neo-realist cinema.
Biography
film director
Alvaro Bizzarri
(Pistoia, Italy) emigrated to Switzerland in 1955, where he began to work as a seasonal factory worker. Through Colonia Libera Italiana, he formed his own political and social conscience and in the late 1960s he began to use the movie camera to denounce the injustice and discrimination inflicted on emigrant workers, in particular Italians and Spaniards. This inspired his first movie, Il treno del sud (1969), financed by the CLI and shot in Super8, as was
his next film, Lo stagionale, his most popular film to
date, publicly praised, for example, by Ugo Casiraghi and Gian Maria Volontè.
Only recently has his filmography, which includes various documentaries about
social and workers' topics, received its rightful recognition, thanks to the
retrospective that was dedicated to him in 2009 at the Locarno Film Festival.
FILMOGRAFIA
Il treno del sud (mm, 1969), Lo stagionale (mm, 1973), Il rovescio della medaglia (doc, mm, 1974), Pagine di una vita dell'emigrazione (doc, mm, 1976), L'Homme et le Temps (La crisi degli orologi svizzeri, doc, 1984), Un'idea, una tela, un pittore (cm, 1985), L'Autre Suisse (Gli asili in Svizzera, doc, mm, 1985),Touchol (Le difficoltà di un musicista emigrato in Svizzera, doc, mm, 1990), Asyle (doc, 1992), Suisse, terre d'Asile? (doc, mm, 1996), AIDS: una condanna mortale? (doc, 1998),Sant'Anna - Per non dimenticare (La strage di Sant'Anna, doc, 2007), Droga - Che fare? (1999), Tenerezze (La figura degli anziani in epoca contemporanea, 2016).
Declaration
film director
“The world of emigrants is a rootless world. In Lo stagionale I
refer above all to the uprooting of Italian and Spanish workers. Today, separation from one's homeland is still happening but the conditions are very different compared to the1970s. When a stranger arrives where you live, he is considered a disturbing element that can foster feelings of xenophobia. Since it's easy to forget your own past, even those who have experienced the condition of being a migrant have the same feelings toward the new arrivals.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR, CINEMATOGRAPHY, FILM EDITING: Alvaro Bizzarri. SOUND: Paolo Delucia. CAST: Rolando Mion, Roberto Frisulli, Giacomo Paronitti, Salvatore Calandra, Luciano Fiorentini, Jean Geiser, Paolo De Lucia, Gabriella Fiorentini, Salvatore Monforte, Antonio Ascioni, Antonio Merola. PRODUCTION: Colonia Libera Italiana.
CONTACTS: Cinémathèque Suisse, Chicca Bergonzi chicca.bergonzi@cinematheque.ch
