Return to the Aeolian Islands

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Return to the Aeolian Islands (Fughe e approdi)

original title:

Fughe e approdi

directed by:

cast:

Francesco D'Ambra, Giovanna Taviani, Adele Turchio, Edoardo Bongiorno, Maria Giuffrè, Caterina Conti, Stefano Cincotta

screenplay:

country:

Italy

year:

2010

film run:

80'

format:

DV - colour

release date:

08/04/2011

festivals & awards:

A voyage aboard a lateen-rigged tartane with a red sail through the Aeolian islands, following the memories of Giovanna Taviani, who more than 20 years ago appeared in the film Kaos (1984). We meet Franco Figliodoro, a local fisherman who also starred in the film and who provides the go-between with the inhabitants of Lipari, Salina, Vulcano, Stromboli and Panarea. A land of flight and landfalls, from which the islanders used to emigrate to flee the fires of their volcanoes or the philoxera on the vines, and which saw political exiles on Lipari, including Emilio Lussu and Carlo Rosselli, who escaped the Fascist regime. But these were also islands of refuge and shelter. Here, the newly-wedded grooms returned having gone out into the world to meet their young wives married by proxy, and the islands also saw the arrival of great filmmakers, who had plenty of material for their imagination here: Roberto Rossellini (Stromboli), Michelangelo Antonioni (L’Avventura), the Taviani brothers (Kaos), William Dieterle (Vulcano), as well as Troisi in Il postino and Moretti in Caro Diario. The documentary explores these films and places through the narratives of local people. From time to time, the images of the journey dissolve into images from the films, in a unique blend between reality and fiction, in which the real stories anticipate the imaginary ones and vice versa.