Experiencing Interruptions?

To the south of Pavese

An intimate journey in search of the threads that keep tying Cesare Pavese’s universe to today’s. The iconic places of the poetic imagery, from Piemonte’s hills to his “exile” by Calabria’s sea, among Macedonian communities repopulating the vineyards, and the stories of those who endure in difficult lands even for the sake of literature.

  • Matteo Bellizzi
    Director
  • Elena Filippini
    Producer
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    A sud di Pavese
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    56 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    November 1, 2015
  • Country of Origin:
    Italy
  • Country of Filming:
    Italy
  • Language:
    Italian
  • Shooting Format:
    HDV
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Torino Film Festival
    Torino
    November 21, 2015
    Italian Premiere
Director Biography - Matteo Bellizzi

Matteo Bellizzi (Vercelli, Italy, 1976) studied at the documentary filmmaking school I Cammelli and debuted with the short Filari di vite in 2000, which he presented at the Torino Film Festival. He then made the documentary Sorriso amaro (2003), which was selected at the Venice Film Festival, at the MoMA in New York, and was aired by Raitre. He directed and supervised the project Piemonte Stories - Storie del Piemonte (2005), twelve shorts that were featured during Turin’s Winter Olympics. In 2006 he made Mentre stai dormendo, a coverage of his trip to Nepal following the humanitarian organization 12 Dicembre. He directed the documentary Valledora in 2011 and started the production company Doc in Progress. In 2012 he also worked on the web-series Radioferrante, which was made in a juvenile detention center.

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Director Statement

“The idea for A Sud di Pavese came from my return, ten years later, to the places where I shot my first short documentary Filari di vite. Even then I was looking for Pavese in the present, searching among the last farmers in the Langhe, those who seem to have come from the pages of one of his novels. That was my encounter with the “myth” that Pavese wrote about […] and it deeply influenced the way I look at things. Returning somewhere means perceiving the end of a world; it means going through the same literary references in order to go beyond and see what’s left. And so Pavese became the lens to reframe reality, to find stories where he found his, as if those places were still active springs.”