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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.

  • Marina Resta
    Director
    Milano fa 90, L'acqua calda e l'acqua fredda
  • Marina Resta
    Writer
    Milano fa 90, L'acqua calda e l'acqua fredda
  • Marina Resta
    Producer
    Milano fa 90, L'acqua calda e l'acqua fredda
  • Giulio Todescan
    Assistant Director
  • Marina Resta
    Photography and Sound
  • Giulio Todescan
    Photography and Sound
  • Marina Resta
    Editing
  • Luca Scapellato
    Sound (post-production)
  • Frank Martino
    Sound (post-production)
  • Giorgia Ripa
    Color Grading
  • Andrea Xausa
    Graphic Design
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Tracce di Rocco
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short, Other
  • Genres:
    Found Footage
  • Runtime:
    16 minutes 46 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 19, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    5,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Italy
  • Country of Filming:
    Italy
  • Language:
    Italian
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital,
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Black & White and Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • “Sempre nuovo è… Scotellaro – Al bivio” - Scotellaro centenary celebration
    Matera
    Italy
    April 23, 2023
    World Premiere
  • Lamezia International Film Festival
    Lamezia, CZ
    Italy
    July 14, 2023
    Official Selection - Prize Chi sarò io
  • Lucania Film Festival
    Pisticci
    Italy
    August 10, 2023
    Extra Film
  • The Memories Film Festival
    Bocchigliero, CS
    Italy
    August 11, 2023
    Special Mention
  • Castel Lagopesole International Short Film Festival
    Castel Lagopesole, PZ
    Italy
    September 1, 2023
    Official Selection
  • Mottola Short Film Festival
    Mottola, TA
    Italy
    September 8, 2023
    Official Selection
  • Real Del Low Budget Film Festival
    Nivelles
    Belgium
    September 15, 2023
    Belgian Pemiere
    Official Selection
  • The Shawna Shea Memorial Film Festival
    Worcester, MA
    United States
    September 22, 2023
    American Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Mykonos Biennale
    Mykonos
    Greece
    September 28, 2023
    Greek Premiere
    Urban Scene
  • Matera International Film Festival
    Matera
    Italy
    September 29, 2023
    Official Selection
  • Matera Film Festival
    Matera
    Italy
    October 2, 2023
    Focus Italia
  • Film in Focus
    Bucharest
    Romania
    Official Selection - Honorable Mention
  • Sipontum Arthouse International Film Festival
    Manfredonia ( FG)
    Italy
    March 22, 2024
    Best Documentary Autunno Season 2023
  • Berlin Kiez Film Festival
    Berlin
    Germany
    Best Documentary Summer Season
  • Foggia Film Festival
    Foggia
    Italy
    November 21, 2023
    Official Selection
  • Festival Fotogenia
    Mexico City
    Mexico
    November 25, 2023
    Latin American Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Dokubazaar - Ljubljana Documentary Film Festival
    Ljubljana
    Slovenia
    October 5, 2023
    Slovenian Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Bristol Radical Film Festival
    Bristol
    United Kingdom
    November 5, 2023
    UK Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Portugal Indie Film Festival
    Nazarè
    Portugal
    Best Documentary September 2023
  • Festival de Sorocaba
    Sorocaba
    Brazil
    Honorable Mention, Best Poster, Best Sound Design, Best Art Direction
  • Monza Film Festival
    Monza
    Italy
    Special Mention Shorts Documentary September/ October 2023
  • Festival Cinema Zero
    Trento
    Italy
    December 1, 2023
    Official Selection
  • Visioni Verticali
    Potenza
    Italy
    December 15, 2023
    Official Selection
  • Vedere Poesia
    Vicenza
    Italy
    December 6, 2023
  • Poetic Cinema Festival
    Buenos Aires
    Argentina
    December 30, 2023
    Argentinian Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Ribalta Experimental Film Festival
    Vignola
    Italy
    March 16, 2024
    Limina
  • Ethnografilm Paris
    Paris
    France
    Official Selection (but not screened)
  • Filmgarten Berlin
    Berlin
    Germany
    April 7, 2024
    German Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Hastings Rocks International Film Festival
    Hastings
    United Kingdom
    April 10, 2024
    Official Online Selection
  • Pueblo Film Festival
    Pueblo, CO
    United States
    April 27, 2024
    Official Selection
  • Festival de Cine Historico
    Tepotzotlàn
    Mexico
    November 17, 2023
    Libre
  • Courtyard Independent Film Festival
    Ottaviano, NA
    Italy
    December 23, 2023
    Official Selection
  • Engativá International Film Festival
    Bogotà
    Colombia
    Colombian Premiere
    Official Selection
  • ANPi Londa Film Festival
    Londa (FI)
    Italy
    June 1, 2024
    Official Section - Respiro
  • Filmare la storia
    Torino
    Italy
    May 29, 2024
    Official Selection
  • Europanorama Film Days
    Riga
    Latvia
    June 4, 2024
    Latvian Première
    Official Selection
  • Post- Cinema Film Festival
    Siracusa
    Italy
    May 26, 2024
    Official Selection
  • Interrobang Film Festival
    Des Moines, IA
    United States
    June 28, 2024
    Official Selection - Best Of Show
  • ShorTS - International Film Festival
    Trieste
    Italy
    July 5, 2024
    Italia in Shorts
  • Social World Film Festival
    Vico Equense, NA
    Italy
    July 5, 2024
    Settimana Internazionale della Critica
  • Berlin Indie Film Festival
    Berlin
    Germany
    Best Short Documentary - July 24
  • Premio Vittorio De Seta @ Clorofilla Film Festival
    Catanzaro
    Italy
    August 3, 2024
    Honorable Mention Premio Vittorio De Seta
  • Francigena Film Festival
    San Gimignano ( SI)
    Italy
    September 19, 2024
    Official Selection
  • Lecce Film Festival - Festival del Cinema invisibile
    Lecce
    Italy
    September 25, 2024
    Official Selection
  • KinoDrome - International Motion Picture & Screenplay Festival
    Cleveland, Ohio
    United States
    September 21, 2024
    Official Selection
  • San Diego Italian Film Festival
    San Diego, California
    United States
    October 1, 2024
    Ristretto Shorts Night
  • Dokubaku International Documentary Film Festival
    Baku
    Azerbaijan
    October 1, 2024
    Asian Premiere
    Non-Main Competition
  • Moon Arts Film Festival
    Quartu Sant'Elena (CA)
    Italy
    October 4, 2024
    Official Selection
  • Scandriglia Film Festival
    Scandriglia ( RI)
    Italy
    October 12, 2024
    Official Selection
  • Festival International de Cinéma et Memoire Commune - Nador
    Nador
    Morocco
    November 6, 2024
    African Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Cortocircuiti Short Film Festival
    Bari
    Italy
    December 1, 2024
    Official Selection
  • IZDOC - Izmir International Documentary Festival
    Izmir
    Turkey
    January 23, 2025
    Turkish Premiere
    Official Seletion
  • Goga Film Fest
    Rome
    Italy
    February 8, 2025
    Official selection
Distribution Information
  • Marina Resta
Director Biography - 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.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

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.