Resistenza naturale

The idea for the film came into being in Pacia, Tuscany, during a late-summer meeting on a project for the Cineteca di Bologna film archive designed to celebrate the spirit of resistance of the Italian farmers who preserve the historical and cultural value of products such as cured meats, cereals, cheese and wine, but are treated as outlaws by the repressive “bureaucratarky” of Brussels. While we sat there talking about the challenges involved in conveying the vitality of the past through the present, suddenly I had the sensation that our exchange was an authentic piece of cinema.

It was a passionate, moving meeting, at once ironic and provocative, and I felt it was a privilege to take part. Finding myself there with my camcorder, no way could I miss the chance to document the moment. As we spoke about questions of vital cultural, social and ecological importance, the barriers between friendship and work, between camera and subject, were erased. In the weeks after that, my wife and I decided to go and visit the winemakers directly on their home patch. Our camera was passed from the hands of one to another and tracked these “involuntary” protagonists of ours in the fields and vineyards where they work. They are revolutionary modern farmers who see their work in a political, social, ecological and economic framework, broader and more complex than that of farmers until a few generations ago.

The story that these four winemakers shared allowed me to understand how a larger story could take shape. Their gallant struggle for the survival of authentic, independent, artisanal manual ability in a post-globalized world thrilled me. And the fortunate presence of Gian Luca Farinelli, one of the most passionate defenders of our collective love of cinema, increasingly on the verge of extinction, became fundamental in establishing a link between the world of rural dissent., that of authentic famers, and the world of dissent in cinema on the part of so-called “high culture.”