From 1979, From the Cloud to the Resistance (Dalla nube alla resistenza) is a two-part film about time, myth and resistance based on two works by Italian writer Cesare Pavese. The first part features six adapted conversations from Pavese’s 1947 novel Dialogues with Leucò, which is composed of imagined dialogues between ancient Greek figures. The dialogues take place in the Piedmontese landscape and concern the relationship between God and humans, the nature of sacrifice and the abuse of power. The second part of the film is set in the present and based on Pavese’s The Moon and the Bonfires (1950), in which an emigrant returns to his native village after the Second World War in search of traces of the life he once knew, only to be confronted by loss, violence, and stories of resistance.

 

Dolando (2003) was made as a gesture from the filmmakers to their crew. One of the film’s actors, Dolando Bernardini – who also stars in From the Cloud to the Resistance – sings a capella three verses from Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered (1581).

 

Programme:

 

From the Cloud to the Resistance (Dalla nube alla resistenza), Dirs. Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, Italy, 1979, 105 min., Italian with English subtitles

 

Dolando, Dirs. Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, Italy/France/Germany, 2003, 7 min., Italian with English subtitles