Michelangelo Frammartino, 54-year-old Italian director, practices an art that goes against the grain of cinema that is mainly anthropocentric. After filming the cycle of organic life in The Quattro Volta (2010), he built his latest film around a deep crevasse in Calabria, which reverses the perception of space-time.
During the ten years that separate your previous film from “Il Buco”, what had become of you?
This film required no less than five years of work. And, when working with reality as raw material, it always takes longer than expected. Failure to control things always creates the unexpected. Before that, a project monopolized me for three years, without succeeding. Apart from films, teaching occupies an important part of my life. Besides, I am very sporty: I ride a bicycle, I swim, I run. My passion for the landscape and the territory comes from there. When I was a teenager, I thought of becoming a professional cyclist, a sport that is practiced on the roads, on the mountains. It shows up in my films.
How did you discover the Bifurto chasm?
I was familiar with the territory of Pollino, a massif in the southern Apennines, between Basilicata and Calabria, which I discovered after filming The Quattro Volta. Speleologists among my acquaintances have taught me the existence of this abyss, the deepest in Italy, as of a dimension below reality. The discovery, by accompanying them, of this submerged part of the landscape aroused in me a lively curiosity.
How do you write such a film, without dialogue, which focuses on the exploration of an underground space?
For me, writing is above all a collection of documentary materials – drawings, images, archives, sketches. The job of Giovanna Giuliani, my co-screenwriter, was to descend into the cave herself. And then, also, to seek in the caving camps the people who were going to become the actors of the film. But the only character, in the classic sense of the term, is the cave.
Why place the film in the past and retrace the pioneering expedition, which dates back to the years 1961-1962?
It was around the time when my father left Calabria for Milan, like millions of Italians left the South for the North. It’s a story that still concerns us today, since Italy is still divided in two and we continue to emigrate, not only to work, but also to study, train or seek treatment. And that concerns me too, born in Milan but of Calabrian origin, and therefore always a little divided in two.
You have 28.64% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.