Giro di lune tra terra e mare

GIRO DI LUNA TRA TERRA E MARE is an experimental film contrasting the ancient Roman empire and its mythical figures with poverty in Naples today. It is intertwined with a modern-day story of a poor family of fishermen, forced by earthquakes during the 1970’s to settle down somewhere else, which means a dramatic shift in the patriarchal order of this traditional family.
The film relates to the history of Pozzuoli, a city west of Naples, at the center of the Phlegraean Fields, in a span of time that goes from 538 B.C. to 1984. There is no seperation between the times, between historical dates that alternate not by progression but by digression. The most ancient of the images centers upon the drama of the killing of Agrippina by her son Nero, on the mad interweaving of the oracles of the Sibyl of Cumae, on the disquieting presence of the young martyr Artema, killed because of the intolerance of his schoolmates, on the hard wanderings of Maria the Mad, the warrior-heroine who will save the city. Events of the story closer in time are superimposed upon the past. We are in the early 1970’s and the land along the gulf is affected, cyclically, by the rising and lowering of the soil. It is a phase of rupture in the relationship between man and his land. The Gioias, a family of fishermen, are forced to abandon their home, eroded by the slow earthquake. The house, its abandonment, the repeated exoduses, and the new settlement where the city is being rebuilt are the emblematic steps of the story of this family in the attempt to rebuild a life. (Film Festival Venedig)