Sicily!
by
MOVIE CATEGORY
After many years spent away from home, Silvestro returns to the Sicilian countryside of his childhood to visit his mother. During his journey, he engages in conversations with strangers at a port, fellow passengers on a train, his mother, and a knife-grinder.
Paolo Spaziani notes: “To write of Sicily! is to explore a mineral stillness, a composed manner, a constant explosion of sunlight—in short, a pure vital immanence which is, in itself, revolutionary. […] This solar opulence will be magnified by Straub-Huillet black and white: faces caught at angles or backlit, revealing an inherent nobility in the sheer act of living. The stark beauty of these Sicilian faces. All is immediately laid bare before our eyes. Depth will be negated by setting the actors against whitewashed walls, inside railway carriages, at the blockhouses of Messina’s dock. Or the sun will take care of it […].”
DIRECTORY
Jean-Marie Straub (1933-2022) was born in Metz. After completing his studies at the universities of Strasbourg and Nancy, he moved to Paris. There, in 1954, he met Danièle Huillet (1936-2006), with whom he established both a lifelong romantic and professional relationship. Straub worked as an assistant for directors such as Robert Bresson, Abel Gance, Jean Renoir, and Jacques Rivette.
In 1963, in Germany, they made their debut with Machorka-Muff, a short film based on a short story by Heinrich Böll. This film, marked by a philologically accurate transposition of an original literary text, heralded the first instance of a distinct style that would come to define their entire oeuvre. Their first feature-length film, The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, followed in 1968. They have since directed about thirty films, exploring the works of authors such as Friedrich Hölderlin and Cesare Pavese. In 2006, they were honored with a special Leone in Venice for innovating cinematic language.
