Traces of Rocco
Traces of Rocco is a journey across the Basilicata of the past and of the present, in search of the iconographical and metaphorical traces of the Southern Italian poet, social researcher and politician Rocco Scotellaro. Developed as part of Zavattini Prize 2018/2019, it's a documentary short-film that juxtaposes heterogeneous audiovisual materials, -archival and shot ad hoc with observational style- generating a short-circuit among the past and the present.
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Marina RestaDirectorMilano fa 90, L'acqua calda e l'acqua fredda
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Marina RestaWriterMilano fa 90, L'acqua calda e l'acqua fredda
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Marina RestaProducerMilano fa 90, L'acqua calda e l'acqua fredda
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Giulio TodescanAssistant Director
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Marina RestaPhotography and Sound
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Giulio TodescanPhotography and Sound
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Marina RestaEditing
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Luca ScapellatoSound (post-production)
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Frank MartinoSound (post-production)
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Giorgia RipaColor Grading
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Andrea XausaGraphic Design
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Project Title (Original Language):Tracce di Rocco
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Project Type:Documentary, Experimental, Short, Other
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Genres:Found Footage
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Runtime:16 minutes 46 seconds
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Completion Date:April 19, 2023
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Production Budget:5,000 EUR
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Country of Origin:Italy
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Country of Filming:Italy
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Language:Italian
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Shooting Format:Digital,
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Aspect Ratio:16:9
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Film Color:Black & White and Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
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“Sempre nuovo è… Scotellaro – Al bivio” - Scotellaro centenary celebrationMatera
Italy
April 23, 2023
World Premiere -
Lamezia International Film FestivalLamezia, CZ
Italy
July 14, 2023
Official Selection - Prize Chi sarò io -
Lucania Film FestivalPisticci
Italy
August 10, 2023
Extra Film -
The Memories Film FestivalBocchigliero, CS
Italy
August 11, 2023
Special Mention -
Castel Lagopesole International Short Film FestivalCastel Lagopesole, PZ
Italy
September 1, 2023
Official Selection -
Mottola Short Film FestivalMottola, TA
Italy
September 8, 2023
Official Selection -
Real Del Low Budget Film FestivalNivelles
Belgium
September 15, 2023
Belgian Pemiere
Official Selection -
The Shawna Shea Memorial Film FestivalWorcester, MA
United States
September 22, 2023
American Premiere
Official Selection -
Mykonos BiennaleMykonos
Greece
September 28, 2023
Greek Premiere
Urban Scene -
Matera International Film FestivalMatera
Italy
September 29, 2023
Official Selection -
Matera Film FestivalMatera
Italy
October 2, 2023
Focus Italia -
Film in FocusBucharest
Romania
Official Selection - Honorable Mention -
Sipontum Arthouse International Film FestivalManfredonia ( FG)
Italy
March 22, 2024
Best Documentary Autunno Season 2023 -
Berlin Kiez Film FestivalBerlin
Germany
Best Documentary Summer Season -
Foggia Film FestivalFoggia
Italy
November 21, 2023
Official Selection -
Festival FotogeniaMexico City
Mexico
November 25, 2023
Latin American Premiere
Official Selection -
Dokubazaar - Ljubljana Documentary Film FestivalLjubljana
Slovenia
October 5, 2023
Slovenian Premiere
Official Selection -
Bristol Radical Film FestivalBristol
United Kingdom
November 5, 2023
UK Premiere
Official Selection -
Portugal Indie Film FestivalNazarè
Portugal
Best Documentary September 2023 -
Festival de SorocabaSorocaba
Brazil
Honorable Mention, Best Poster, Best Sound Design, Best Art Direction -
Monza Film FestivalMonza
Italy
Special Mention Shorts Documentary September/ October 2023 -
Festival Cinema ZeroTrento
Italy
December 1, 2023
Official Selection -
Visioni VerticaliPotenza
Italy
December 15, 2023
Official Selection -
Vedere PoesiaVicenza
Italy
December 6, 2023 -
Poetic Cinema FestivalBuenos Aires
Argentina
December 30, 2023
Argentinian Premiere
Official Selection -
Ribalta Experimental Film FestivalVignola
Italy
March 16, 2024
Limina -
Ethnografilm ParisParis
France
Official Selection (but not screened) -
Filmgarten BerlinBerlin
Germany
April 7, 2024
German Premiere
Official Selection -
Hastings Rocks International Film FestivalHastings
United Kingdom
April 10, 2024
Official Online Selection -
Pueblo Film FestivalPueblo, CO
United States
April 27, 2024
Official Selection -
Festival de Cine HistoricoTepotzotlàn
Mexico
November 17, 2023
Libre -
Courtyard Independent Film FestivalOttaviano, NA
Italy
December 23, 2023
Official Selection -
Engativá International Film FestivalBogotà
Colombia
Colombian Premiere
Official Selection -
ANPi Londa Film FestivalLonda (FI)
Italy
June 1, 2024
Official Section - Respiro -
Filmare la storiaTorino
Italy
May 29, 2024
Official Selection -
Europanorama Film DaysRiga
Latvia
June 4, 2024
Latvian Première
Official Selection -
Post- Cinema Film FestivalSiracusa
Italy
May 26, 2024
Official Selection -
Interrobang Film FestivalDes Moines, IA
United States
June 28, 2024
Official Selection - Best Of Show -
ShorTS - International Film FestivalTrieste
Italy
July 5, 2024
Italia in Shorts -
Social World Film FestivalVico Equense, NA
Italy
July 5, 2024
Settimana Internazionale della Critica -
Berlin Indie Film FestivalBerlin
Germany
Best Short Documentary - July 24 -
Premio Vittorio De Seta @ Clorofilla Film FestivalCatanzaro
Italy
August 3, 2024
Honorable Mention Premio Vittorio De Seta -
Francigena Film FestivalSan Gimignano ( SI)
Italy
September 19, 2024
Official Selection -
Lecce Film Festival - Festival del Cinema invisibileLecce
Italy
September 25, 2024
Official Selection -
KinoDrome - International Motion Picture & Screenplay FestivalCleveland, Ohio
United States
September 21, 2024
Official Selection -
San Diego Italian Film FestivalSan Diego, California
United States
October 1, 2024
Ristretto Shorts Night -
Dokubaku International Documentary Film FestivalBaku
Azerbaijan
October 1, 2024
Asian Premiere
Non-Main Competition -
Moon Arts Film FestivalQuartu Sant'Elena (CA)
Italy
October 4, 2024
Official Selection -
Scandriglia Film FestivalScandriglia ( RI)
Italy
October 12, 2024
Official Selection -
Festival International de Cinéma et Memoire Commune - NadorNador
Morocco
November 6, 2024
African Premiere
Official Selection -
Cortocircuiti Short Film FestivalBari
Italy
December 1, 2024
Official Selection -
IZDOC - Izmir International Documentary FestivalIzmir
Turkey
January 23, 2025
Turkish Premiere
Official Seletion -
Goga Film FestRome
Italy
February 8, 2025
Official selection
Distribution Information
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Marina Resta
Marina Resta (Altamura, Bari, 1984).
She graduated in Film Studies from Università di Bologna and Freie Universität Berlin. She attended the Documentary course at the Film School Scuola Civica “Luchino Visconti” in Milan and a Master’s in Production and Communication for Audiovisual and Digital Media at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. As a filmmaker she made “Milano fa 90” (2013) and “L’acqua calda e l’acqua fredda” (2015), presented in several festivals including Sguardi Altrove in Milan and Foggia Film Festival. In 2018 “Traces of Rocco” was selected among the 10 finalist projects of the Zavattini Prize. She teaches audio-visual disciplines in art high school. She has been the artistic director and organiser of Working Title Film Festival since 2016.
The film was developed as part of the Zavattini Prize 2018/2019, promoted by AAMOD (Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico – Audiovisual Archives of the Workers and Democratic Movement), which stimulated my sensitivity and curiosity for viewing and researching archival materials and (re)using them creatively and respectfully at the same time. I chose to focus on Basilicata, a region to which I am very attached for biographical reasons, and also the birthplace of Rocco Scotellaro.
In fact, the inspiration for Traces of Rocco stems from my personal fascination with this important person from Basilicata, a figure as complex - in just 30 years of life he was a poet, writer, socialist mayor of his hometown Tricarico (MT) and social researcher with Manlio Rossi Doria - as almost forgotten. I have tried to confront Scotellaro and what he represents for Basilicata by working on his absence. Physical absence, absence of audiovisual materials depicting him, absence of direct witnesses (many of them have already died). So my work was to search for his traces and then to disseminate them in the film. The traces are meant both as signs of his life (his village, his house, his grave, the Luce newsreel announcement of his posthumous achievement of the Viareggio Prize for the collection of poems "È fatto giorno"), but also the iconographic traces that preserve and transmit his memory (plaques, paintings, murals and even the bronze effigy depicting Michele Mulieri, one of the "Peasants of the South" interviewed for the homonymous book by Scotellaro). Carlo Levi, a friend of the Lucanian poet from the time of his confinement in Basilicata under Fascism, played a leading role in passing on the figure of Scotellaro, contributing to create his mythology. Particularly in the triptych "Lucania '61," now on display at the Museo Nazionale di Matera in Palazzo Lanfranchi, Levi makes Scotellaro the focus of the entire painting and the metaphor of Lucania itself. Basilicata and southern Italy in general suffered (and continues to suffer) external gazes' storytelling, which, between the late 1940s and the 1960s were polarized between the "pure place outside History" that embodies the Levi vision, and the promises of technical and infrastructural development linked to the rhetoric of Agrarian Reform and the implementation of the Marshall Plan. A third narrative that runs alongside these in the film is the one linked to Matera 2019 - European Capital of Culture, the storytelling of the cultural redemption of a city and territory long considered "the shame of Italy", now invaded by tourists. The film interweaves all these threads -the different narratives and rhetorics and Scotellaro's traces- by comparing archival materials from AAMOD and Istituto Luce with observational footage shot today in those same places. However, my choice was not to conceal the heterogeneity of the materials and their different provenance, but rather to highlight it, making clear the partiality of each narrative and ultimately the impossibility of reaching a vision on Basilicata, if not fragmentary and sometimes contradictory. Similarly, Rocco Scotellaro remains in the film an elusive, ghostly figure, of whom one can always aspire to find new traces.
Note di Regia (italiano)
Il film è stato realizzato nell’ambito del Premio Zavattini 2018/2019, promosso dall’AAMOD, che ha stimolato la mia sensibilità e curiosità per la visione e la ricerca dei materiali d’archivio e per un loro (ri)utilizzo creativo e allo stesso tempo rispettoso. Ho scelto di concentrarmi sulla Basilicata, regione a cui sono molto legata per motivi biografici, nonché terra natia di Rocco Scotellaro.
Infatti, l’ispirazione per Tracce di Rocco nasce da una mia personale fascinazione per questo importante personaggio lucano, figura tanto complessa – in soli trent’anni di vita è stato poeta, scrittore, sindaco socialista del suo paese natale Tricarico (MT) e ricercatore sociale con Manlio Rossi Doria – quanto dimenticata. Ho cercato di confrontarmi con Scotellaro e con ciò che rappresenta per la Basilicata, lavorando sulla sua assenza. Assenza fisica, assenza di materiali audiovisivi che lo ritraggono, assenza di testimoni diretti (per motivi anagrafici). Allora il mio lavoro è stato quello di ricercare le sue tracce e poi di disseminarle nel film. Tracce intese sia come segni della sua vita (il suo paese, la sua casa, la sua tomba, l’annuncio del Cinegiornale Luce della sua vittoria postuma del Premio Viareggio per la raccolta di poesie “È fatto giorno”), ma anche le tracce iconografiche che ne preservano e tramandano la memoria (targhe, dipinti, murales e anche l’effige in bronzo che raffigura Michele Mulieri, uno dei “Contadini del Sud” intervistati per il libro omonimo da Scotellaro). Carlo Levi, amico del poeta lucano fin dai tempi del suo confino in Basilicata sotto il Fascismo, ha avuto un ruolo di primo piano nel tramandare la figura di questi, contribuendo a crearne la mitologia. In particolare nel trittico “Lucania ’61”, oggi esposto al Museo Nazionale di Matera nella sede di Palazzo Lanfranchi, Levi rende Scotellaro il fulcro di tutto il dipinto e la metafora della Lucania stessa. La Basilicata, e in generale l’Italia meridionale, ha subìto (e continua a subire) le narrazioni di sguardi esterni, che tra la fine degli anni ’40 e gli anni ’60 erano polarizzate tra il “luogo puro fuori dalla Storia” che incarna la visione leviana e le promesse di sviluppo tecnico e infrastrutturale legate alla retorica della Riforma Agraria e dell’attuazione del Piano Marshall. Una terza narrazione che si affianca a queste nel film è quella legata a Matera 2019 – Capitale europea della cultura, lo storytelling del riscatto culturale di una città e di un territorio a lungo considerati “la vergogna d’Italia”, oggi invasi dai turisti. Nel film si intrecciano tutti questi fili – le diverse narrazioni e retoriche e le tracce di Scotellaro – mettendo a confronto i materiali d’archivio dell’AAMOD e dell’Istituto Luce con le immagini osservative girate oggi in quegli stessi luoghi. Tuttavia la mia scelta è stata quella di non celare l’eterogeneità dei materiali e la loro diversa provenienza, ma anzi di evidenziarla, rendendo palese la parzialità di ogni narrazione e in definitiva l’impossibilità di raggiungere una visione sulla Basilicata, se non frammentaria e a volte contraddittoria. Allo stesso modo Rocco Scotellaro resta nel film una figura sfuggente, fantasmatica, di cui si può aspirare a trovare sempre nuove tracce.