Lo Spazio Vuoto

A walk through the immense private library of Italian writer and thinker Umberto Eco (1932-2016).

This documentary is the result of a series of visits the filmmaker makes over the course of a year to the house of Pierino, a cinephile and a fascinatingly organized man.

Mario Cavallaro is 50 and lives in the same district of always in Milano and fears changes until arrives Oba, a Senegalese seller of socks so he decides to kidnap Oba and take him back to Senegal.

Taking us on a deep dive into the Audio-visual Archive of the Labour and Democratic Movement in Italy, the director transforms images related to the ‘Southern Question’ – news reports and films from the 1960s that deal with the subordinate state of Southern Italy comparative to the North.

A sculptor needs a thick garden. During the day he makes funeral casts to the dead of the village, giving their respective families not the authentic remains but a wax copy covered by a death mask. The corpses, carefully placed in the ground behind the house, make the garden mature, while the colonies of mushrooms fueled by their decomposition generate unexpected visions in those who walk there.

The factory becomes a pulsating organism: machines and looms move in a hypnotic rhythm, while the fabric takes shape. Amid the industrial sounds, the hands and faces of workers emerge. Mechanical details and human gazes intertwine, transforming the work into a poetic and sensorial landscape.

1630, Val Brembana, Northern Italy. The arrival of the plague in a small village breaks every fragile balance. The disease takes over bodies, homes, relationships, slowly transforming the community into a sick organism dominated by fear and suspicion while nature remains indifferent to man's suffering.

In 1965, Elio was eighteen years old and had just moved to Turin. Through a collage of letters from his parents, his friend Nino and his lover Raffaella, this impressive film brings his world back to life. Sketching out the story of a restless and rebellious youth, torn between responsibility and pleasure, Dear Monster immerses us in a heady tale that features an unexpectedly poignant conclusion.