The diptych The Return of the Prodigal Son / Humiliated (Il Ritorno del figlio prodigo / Umiliati) (2001–03) is a segue from Workers, Peasants (2001) and Straub and Huillet’s third film based on the writings of Elio Vittorini. The film returns to Vittorini’s Marxist novel The Women of Messina (1973) about a community founded after the Second World War by workers and peasants from different regions of Italy. In the film, the commune is threatened by the pressures of a restructured post-war world, of its laws and politics, and by the forces of history from which they had hoped to protect themselves.

 

Dolando (2003), was made as a gesture from the filmmakers to their crew. One of the film’s actors, Dolando Bernardini – who also starred in From the Cloud to the Resistance (1979) – sings a capella three verses from Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered (1581).

 

The Return of the Prodigal Son / Humiliated will be screened in its original 35mm format.

 

Programme:

 

The Return of the Prodigal Son / Humiliated (Il Ritorno del figlio prodigo / Umiliati), Dirs. Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, Italy, 2001 – 03, 64 min., Italian with English subtitles.

 

Incantati, Dirs. Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, 2002, Italy/France/Germany, 35mm, 6 min., Italian with English subtitles.

 

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