TREVICO-TORINO (VIAGGIO NEL FIAT-NAM) (Italy, 1973, 101′)

Sunday October 5th. at 10 am, Cinema Centrale Arthouse

International title: Trevico-Torino (Viaggio nel Fiat-Nam)
Original title: Trevico-Torino (Viaggio nel Fiat-Nam)
Director: Ettore Scola
Screenplay: Diego Novelli, Ettore Scola
Photography: Claudio Cirillo
Editing: Raimondo Crociani
Sound: Benedetto Ghiglia
Starring: Paolo Turco, Vittoria Franzinetti, Stefania Casini
Production: Unitelefilm

Fortunato Santospirito arrives in Turin from Trevico, town in the Italian province of Avellino, to work for Fiat. He makes friends with a communist trade unionist in Porta Palazzo. After work, he attends reunions by both southern people and left-wing extremist groups. Distance from home, racism against southerners, harsh working conditions, an unrequited love all represent the core of Francesco’s new life who, step by step, becomes aware of his own exploitation.
Shot in 16mm, with a small troupe, intertwining fiction and documentary, and based on a subject by Scola and journalist and future Turin mayor Diego Novelli, this movie is a little-known masterpiece by the Roman director, restored in 2018 by the Turin National Museum of Cinema and Fondazione Cineteca of Bologna. Presenting the film is Elio Sacchi (University of Turin).

Ettore Scola (Trevico, 1931 – Rome, 2016) wrote unforgettable pages of Italian cinema, while formerly working as cartoonist for the humor magazine Marc’Aurelio , as screenwriter of Italian comedies and as author of radio and TV variety shows in the 1950s. In 1964 he debuted behind the camera with Se permettete parliamo di donne , followed by works that remained in the collective imaginary by suggesting a plural depiction of past and present Italian society.

Filmography (selection): Se permettete parliamo di donne (1964), La congiuntura (1965), Riusciranno i nostri eroi a ritrovare l’amico misteriosamente scomparso in Africa? (1968), Il commissario Pepe (1969), Dramma della gelosia (tutti i particolari in cronaca) (1970), Permette? Rocco Papaleo (1971), Trevico-Torino (Viaggio nel Fiat-Nam (1973), C’eravamo tanto amati (1974), Brutti, sporchi e cattivi (1976), Una giornata particolare (1977), La terrazza (1980), Passione d’amore (1981), Il mondo nuovo (1982), Ballando ballando (1983), La famiglia (1987), Splendor (1989), Che ora è (1989), Il viaggio di Capitan Fracassa (1990), Romanzo di un giovane povero (1995), Che strano chiamarsi Federico (2013).