Wounded Realities: Remedial Gestures and Silence of the Myths in the Lucania of Nonfiction Cinema During the 1950s and the 1960s

After World War II, some of the most active Italian filmmakers of nonfiction cinema were interested in a Southern world that was disappearing in the face of chaotic and rapid modernization. Authors such as Luigi Di Gianni, Lino Del Fra, and Michele Gandin caught the latest testimonies of a universe made up of human beings capable of weaving, through the mythical-ritual dimension, the weft of a social and cultural system in a precarious balance. In their films, Lucania appears as a difficult world where remedial gestures become insufficient to change historical and social conditions. This context limited the possibilities to filming the crisis, and this is what Luigi Di Gianni did after completing his Magia Lucana (1958). Basilicata can no longer trust in the saving behaviors of magical-mythical rites and reveals a wound impossible to suture, a trauma linked to the loss of myths. In this light, the chapter investigates the discourses that have arisen around the aforementioned ethnographic cinema and its double function. On the one hand, it speaks to us of the cathartic and ordering power of ancient, magic rituals and traditions, while on the other hand, it highlights their dramatic failure when faced with a new world based on modernization and nefarious land exploitation. From the perspective of this double relationship of communion and conflict between humans and the environment, the study of Italian nonfiction cinema of the 1950s and 1960s can contribute to a greater awareness of current human and environmental problems.