Mala apokalipsa
Minor apocalypse
Alvaro Petricig / Italy, Slovenia / 2008 / 41 min / Colour
Cisgne was a small hamlet in the Natisone Valleys, between Italy and Slovenia. Like many other mountain or marginal places, it was condemned to abandon and ruin by the economic logic of modern life. It was definitively abandoned after the 1976 earthquake when the only solution offered to its residents was to move to new homes at the valley line. Yet Cisgne remained up there, left to die and sink down in silence, because here the apocalypse is not announced by thunder and drum rolls. Sounds, not words, accompany us amid the ruins of the districts. The voices of the people interviewed, heard over fuzzy, grainy images, seem like alien voices, just as the landscape became alienated with the disappearance of its inhabitants. Shadows of faces appear, like simulacra from the past. The objects scattered in the dust of the abandoned houses are seen next to the anonymous Formica furniture of the new, cold houses of those who “were” mountain dwellers. The drizzling rain underlines the desolation of the abandoned objects. And, finally, a fire goes out, like the end of life.
Alvaro Petricig
Credits
Language Slovenian, Italian Subject Alvaro Petricig Screenplay Alvaro Petricig Cinematography Paolo Comuzzi Sound Massimo Toniutti Editing Paolo Comuzzi Producer Ales Dektoric Ì Production company Zavod Kinoatelje, Kinoatelje