Special event

Italy - 1951 - 35 mm - Black and white
Length: 15’ - Language: Italian
Director: Adolfo Baruffi
Subject: Dino Buzzati

An exceptional document restored by the Fondazione Cineteca of Milan. Based on a subject by the writer Dino Buzzati, this short film (once lost) was filmed entirely on location between 1950 and 1951 at Colle Santa Lucia in the Bellunese Dolomites at the foot of Mount Pelmo. The film captures the local population as seen through the eyes of its postman on a spring day. Making his regular rounds, the postman visits with people going about their everyday tasks. The film paints a pleasing picture of life in the mountains 50 years ago, where, on the occasion of this documentary, the locals transform themselves into actors - displaying historic and ancient traditions and wearing characteristic clothing - to keep alive the details of an age long forgotten.

Italy - 1997 - Colour
Length: 159’ - Language: Italian
Directors: Andrea e Antonio Frazzi
Script: Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Rulli
Photography: Franco Lecca
Editing: Claudio Cutry
Main cast: Sergio Castellitto, Ilaria Occhini, Roberto Citran, Arturo Paglia
Production: RAI Cinemafiction, Hiland

Filmed in the places that don Milani lived and worked, the film narrates the years that the priest spent in the tiny village of Barbiana, in the mountains of the Mugello. The tale begins in 1953 when, in San Donato a Calenzano, the young priest founds a lay school and has his first run-ins with the ecclesiastical gerarchy. Exiled to Barbiana, don Milani makes this forlorn and forgotten place a witness to his life and work, and ultimately leaves an indelible trace in the history of the Church. His school for the children of farmers will give sense to his mission in the mountains and transform the miscrocosm of Barbiana into a center for a loving and generous religious and pastoral experience.

Italy - 1996 - Colour
Length: 68’ - Language: Italian
Director: Sandro Gastinelli
Script: Sandro Gastinelli, Piero Tassone, Paolo Somà
Photography: Sandro Gastinelli
Editing: Sandro Gastinelli, Marzia Pellegrino
Music: Roberto De Siena, Maurio Giulietti Abourasqui
Production: Studiouno Produzioni Televisive

Piero Tassone is an old farmer who, towards the end of his days, realizes that he has nothing to leave behind except for his passionate memory of his life in the mountains. This is how he writes the tale of the happiest period of his life, when he and his contemporaries climb to old mountain huts (known as the “tech”) where they procured hay, bunched it together in sheaves (known as the “fnè”) and transported it down the valley each winter by sled. This rite of the
hay harvest, as executed in the Valle Maudagna on the mountains of Cuneo, was already being gradually abandonned by the 1950s. In his manuscript, Tassone records the last nostalgic harvest which he completed in 1963 «...among friends in order to feel young again, rather than out of necessity». The film reconstructs the tale of this last harvest, thereby preventing it from being lost forever. In the end, it is «the little story of a beautiful and tiresome activity that, for those of us lived at high altitudes between the hills and the mountains, was necessary for survival».

Italy - 1999 - Colour
Length: 52’ - Language: Italian
Director: Sandro Gastinelli
Script: Sandro Gastinelli
Photography: Sandro Gastinelli
Editing: Sandro Gastinelli, Marzia Pellegrino
Music: Maurizio Veglio, Davi Arneodo
Production: Studiouno Produzioni Televisive
RAI Sede Regionale della Valle d’Aosta

The life of Piero Tassone, able wood sculptor and talented ski instructor. It is precisely this passion for skiing - he knew every statistic, name, time, and race - that will convince Tassone to participate in the quintessential 1950s television show “Lascia o Raddoppia?”, an event that will dramatically alter the course of his life. After bursting onto the scene of prime time television in front of 14 million viewers Tassone finds work in Cervina. His other passion is hunting, something Tassone learned in his native mountains of Friosa in the province of Cuneo. The film also covers wartime, when Piero was a guard at Palazzo Venezia the night Mussolini deposed the king, and later, when he ends up in a German work camp. It is actually in Germany that Tassone promises himself that he will one day return to his hometown of Sant'Orso, a promise he faithfully maintains, 50 years later.

Italy - 1918 - 35 mm - Black and white
Lenght: 32’ - Language: Silent film
Filmed by the Cinematographic Section of the
Royal Italian Army
Copy provenance of: Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino

The film documents the daily life and movements of the Alpine regiments on Mount Tonale during the First World War. We see the arrival of the impediments, meals, drills with the howitzer, the ropeways suspended at an altitude of 1500 meters, wagons being pulled by donkeys, glacier lakes, and tunnels carved out of snow. An exceptional document that includes footage of enemy positions acquired on May 25, 1918 plus the May 27, 1918 bombardments of Austrian positions and the fire at Santa Caterina. The film concludes with scenes from the Third Alpine Regiment (Cavento Edolo and Mandrone) and footage of an Austrian prisoner colony.

Italy - 1916 - 35 mm - Black and white
Length: 93’ - Language:  Silent film
Director: Luigi Maggi, Romano Borgnetto
Copy provenance of: Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino

A troupe of Italia-Film is working in a small Austrian village at the outbreak of hostilities. When fire ceases, the actors and employees are able to escape, finding refuge in the castle of Pratolungo, as the guests of an Italian count. Maciste helps the group transit out of danger but - in the meantime - he and his daughter, trapped in the Castle, are imprisoned. Enlisting in the Alpine forces, the hero deals with the enemy and liberates the benefactors.

Italy - 2005 - Colour
Length: 21' - Language: Italian
Made by : Centro Audiovisivi PAT e dal Museo Storico in Trento
Production: Provincia Autonoma di Trento

Made on the occasion of the inauguration of the Refuge of the Fallen at Adamello, opened after three years of restoration work promoted by the
Fondazione Caduti dell'Adamello, the film proposes a voyage through the stories that have made this area one of remembrance. A chorus singing some of the most celebrated melodies inspired by war in the mountains accompanies images filmed during the World War I and at Fascist Era inaugural ceremonies of the refuge.