Italian South-East ( Italian Sud-Est )

Italian South-East (DVD) (*)

~~$24.99~~ $18.97

Original Title: Italian Sud-Est
Screened, competed or awarded at:
Venice Film Festival

Language Selections:
English ( Subtitles )
Italian ( Dolby Digital 5.1 )

Product Origin/Format:
Italy ( PAL/Region 0 )

Running Time:
110 min

Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen (1.78:1)

Special Features:
Behind the scenes
Deleted Scenes
Interactive Menu
Photo Gallery
Scene Access
Short Film
Trailer(s)

Movie filmed in 1998 and produced in:
Italy ( Italy, Greece )

Directed By:
Davide Barletti
Edoardo Cicchetti

Written By:
Lorenzo Conte
Mattia Mariani

Actors:
Antonio Aluisi
Caterina Tortosa
Matteo Fraterno
Alberto Signore
Lea Barletti
Gianni Monteduro

Synopsis:

Italian Sud-Est is not a film about the Salento area. It's simply a journey, a journey along a border, like the ones we dream of when we're children. Well, like the ones we dreamt about when we played cowboys and Indians. One day we got on one of these strange trains, we wanted to understand where the Salento people were going. We got lost. We couldn't find the stations to get off. Just like a dream, a nightmare perhaps. Salento, 2003. Caterina is roaming through Salento, extreme south-eastern Italy. She travels on little yellow trains, the trains run by Sud-Est, the local railway that traverses the province of Lecce. She talks to a different person every day, a passenger, engine driver or railway worker. Every day she listens to stories, voices, memories , tales of nomadic tribes, saints and legends, but also accounts of injustice, deterioration and abandon. She takes notes of some things on a tape recorder. Caterina might be a journalist. At times she dreams...

The region known as the Salentino, with Lecce as its capital, is terra incognita to most foreigners, as well as Italians. Using a sociologist posing as a reporter (Caterina Tortosa), the helmers set out to explore the oddities of an area that still has a frontier feel. Caterina interviews trainmasters, some real, some scripted, about the history of the line, while the camera moves on to passengers and assorted local kooks. Deliberately blurring the borders between fiction and non-fiction, the stories are ultimately less about the region than a way to uncover the residents' foibles through the helmers' patronizing lens. There's a man obsessed with menhirs, or Neolithic monuments (Alberto Signore), as well as a guru-like character (Vincent Brunetti) whose house appears to have come out of a Lego nightmare. But if a mood is being conveyed, it's one of hothouse insularity and self-obsession. Only a Lebanese immigrant, speaking about the prejudice around him, breaks through the postmodernist jumble and briefly tells an involving story. Occasionally there are glimpses of the region's beauty, such as extraordinary red mineral formations that seem to offer a home to a silent nudist, but Fluid Video Crew was obviously not attempting to make a commercial for the local tourist board.

This product was added to our catalog on Wednesday 18 November, 2015.