KOBARID
Kobarid tells the war, the defeat, the failure of power politics, the massacre of soldiers and civilians, and it does so by listening to the voice of the mountains, the forests, the trenches, to the multitude of anonymous soldiers. On the one hand, images of Kobarid today that appear indifferent, on the other hand, the cruel and brutal stories of soldiers of both sides. The voice is from Italian actor Alessio Boni.
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Christian Carmosino MereuDirector
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Christian Carmosino MereuWriter
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Marina MargioniWriter
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Christian Carmosino MereuProducer
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Beppe LeonettiProducerIncandenza Film
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Fabrizio MambroProducerCommand B
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Vito ZagarrioProducerUniversità Roma Tre
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Alessio BoniKey Cast"soldier"
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Svarte GreinerMusic
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Riccardo SpagnolSould Design
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Christian Carmosino MereuDirector of Photography
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Project Type:Documentary, Experimental
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Genres:History, War
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Runtime:1 hour 40 minutes 15 seconds
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Completion Date:January 10, 2019
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Production Budget:15,000 USD
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Country of Origin:Italy
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Country of Filming:Slovenia
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Language:English, French, Italian
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Shooting Format:4K
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Aspect Ratio:scope
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
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Trieste Film FestivalTrieste
Italy
January 20, 2019
World Premiere
Born in Ventimiglia (Italy) in 1972. Graduate cum laude of Roma 3 University with a degree in Literature and a thesis on short films. Director, producer and teacher he has over 20 years experience in organization of film screenings and events. He cooperated and worked in the selection committee of several international festivals, among them Siena, Trevignano, InCurt (Spain). In 2000 in Siena he directed the first International meeting on “Internet Cinema”. From 2001 till 2002 he worked at the Italian National Film Library - Cineteca Nazionale (Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia).
Since 2002 he started his career in film making, directing short films and documentaries, some of his films have been screened and awarded all around the world. In 2005 founded OFF!CINE, a film society and a film company. At the moment he works as manager of the Audio-visuals Production Center at Rome 3 University. In 2010 he has been artistic director of [CINEMA.DOC], the first Italian project for distributing documentary films in national theatres. From 2011 till 2015 he was been curator of the Doc/it Professional Award, the Italian professional prize for the Best Italian Documentary of the Year. From 2012 till 2015 he has been artistic director of IL MESE DEL DOCUMENTARIO. In 2015 his screenplay “Emma e Maria” was Finalist at Franco Solinas Prize. In 2016 he created and coordinated the “Master Cinema del Reale” (Documentary Filmmaking) of Rome 3 University. From 2009 till 2012 he has been member of the National Board of FICC (Italian Federation of Film Societies). From 2011 till 2015 he has been member of the National Board of Doc/it (Italian documentary Association).
Essential Fimography:
Gesù di Capocotta
(Jusus of Capocotta, 2003, short mockumentary, 18’, MiniDV)
Pierino12.06.04
(2004, short doc, 17’, MiniDV)
Best film, "Memoria Storica Prize" at Valsusa Film Festival 2004
¿Quién es Pilar?
(Who is Pilar?, 2005, short fiction, 16’, 35mm)
selected in over 30 festival all around the World and
winner of many prizes for best film, best direction, best screenplay, best original soundtrack
La zuppa di pietra
(Stone soup, 2007, short fiction, 14’, 35mm)
Winner of Cortolazio Prize 2006-2007
Frist Prize Academia Barilla 2008
and screened in national and international festivals
Gli Invisibili - Esordi nel cinema Italiano 2000-2006
(The invisibles - Debuts in Italian Cinema 2000-2006, 2007, documentary, 52', MiniDV)
L'ora d'amore
(The Love Hour, 2008, documentary, 52', HDV)
Official Selection Festival Internazionale del Film di Roma
Targa d'argento at 3rd Festival del Cinema dello Stretto, Messina;
Special Mention at 11th International Film Festival on Human Rights DerHumALC, Buenos Aires - Argentina;
Best Documentary at 10th Maremetraggio, Trieste;
Special Mention at 2nd Documenta Film Festival, Sezze LT;
Best Documentary at 4th Overlook Film Festival - Finale Ligure;
Best Documentary "Periferie Romane" at 3rd Visioni Fuori Raccordo Film Festival;
Special Mention at CineOjo Film Festival, Valparaiso - Chile.
Segni particolari: documentarista
(2013, doc, 63', HD)
A piedi nudi
La rivoluzione d’ottobre in Burkina Faso e la successiva transizione
(2015, doc, 52', HD)
La lunga strada gialla
(The long yellow road, 79, doc, HD)
Premio “Ambiente e Società” a CinemAmbiente Torino 2016
The film evokes the battle alternating 45 scenes with 45 corresponding fragments of diaries of Italian and Austro-Hungarian soldiers.
The historical reconstruction (based on real diaries both of Austrian and Italian soldiers) enters into relationship with the village of today, exactly one century after the battle.
The film recreates an atmosphere in which what is presented is not events from a “remote” past, but a combination of an indefinite “near” past (the audio diaries) entering into dialogue with the present (long take scenes).
The 45 recollections are loyal reconstructions of the past. The oral dimension is put to the test, in a dialogue with the normal and calm flow of everyday temporality, in which the viewer is able to place the memory of the battle inside a contemporary “scene” offered by the places where the fighting took place. The film highlights, by means of contrast or metonymy, History as a collective memory closely connected to the banality of everyday life, lacking the traditional and foreseeable meanings the war iconography generally conveys.
For these reasons I did not want to portray the tragic battle of Caporetto with the classical instruments employed by cinema and documentaries (reconstructions, interviews with historians, archive images); rather I wanted to try to create a temporal short-circuit and bring the viewer into the battle as if its memory were recent and, above all, as if the narrating voice (of Alessio Boni), interpreting a selection of the fragments of the diaries of real soldiers, could bring memory to life with its presence and closeness.
The selection of the diaries includes those by renown soldiers, such as Lussu, Gadda, Malaparte, but also unknown soldiers and in some cases even anonymous soldiers. Not all diaries are Italian, indeed some belong the Austro-Hungarian “enemy”. The film, in fact, does not offer a one-sided view of history nor does it try to interpret it, rather it simply lends a voice to the men who are the bearers of both the tragedy and the joyous humanity – which is in no way touched by borders. In this sense, indirectly, the film is a cry against all wars, represented in all their absurdity, visible from any side one may want to look at them.
The diaries are rich also in everyday events, presented with no emphasis or rhetoric. In some cases simplicity prevails, irony, desperation in others.
The films attempt, through the narrative artifice, to bring reality and fiction together, with a play created by the displacing effect of the expressive register with regard to the ontological truth of the images. Conversely, the other founding element is the absence of the classic topos of war cinema, the use of archives and reconstructed images. The memory of the actions and of the battles is entirely removed from the classical and well known visual or audio representation. The intention is to allow the viewer to draw from recollections and images that today form a collective memory, and to let this occur indirectly, that is, through the participation of the viewer who will (or will not) resort to those images by means of an exercise of visual re-creation.
With the aim of stimulating this process of superimposition, the choice was made to edit the film with long takes. The “suspension” they produce on the one hand helps the emotion evoked by the diaries to proliferate and grow, while on the other it helps to collocate those fragments, splinters, in a “contemporary” space that is in a certain sense “virgin”, totally open to the “insertions” made by the viewer. For this reason there are no camera moves in the long takes, and when there are they are only just perceptible because of how slow and precise they are.
Christian Carmosino Mereu