With: Giuseppe Fuda (the shepherd), Bruno Timpano, Nazareno Timpano, Artemio Vallone (coal makers)
Director/Screenplay: Michelangelo Frammartino
Producers: Marta Donzelli, Gregorio Paonessa, Susanne Marian, Philippe Bober, Gabriella Manfrè, Elda Guidinetti, Andres Pfaeffli
Production co: Vivo Film, Essential Filmproduktion, Invisible Film, Ventura Film
Photography: Andrea Locatelli
Editor: Benni Atria, Maurizio Grillo
Music: Paolo Benvenuti
REVIEWS
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Michelangelo Frammartino’s ode to the cycles of nature applies a wryly detached ‘documentary’ eye to what is in fact a meticulously staged and richly loaded drama – in which some of the principal actors are mineral, vegetable and animal.  Here humanity is no longer at the centre of the universe, simply part of its mysterious process: we see a mighty tree accorded more ceremony in death than a superstitious old man.  Frammartino’s eye on the animal world is little short of miraculous.  He holds us enthralled by the territorial contests of baby goats – and, in a shot that will live forever in cinema history, floors us with the intervention in human affairs of a dog.

“Le Quattro Volte, an idiosyncratic and amazing new film… is so full of surprises – nearly every shot contains a revelation, sneaky or overt, cosmic or mundane – that even to describe it is to risk giving something away… In four chapters… Mr Frammartino successively chronicles the earthly transit and material transmutation of an old man, a young goat, a tree and a batch of charcoal.  Each being or thing is examined with such care and wit that you become engrossed in the moment-to-moment flow of cinematic prose, only at the end grasping the epic scope and lyrical depth of what you have seen, which is more or less all of creation.”

— A.O. Scott, NY Times
FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Wellington
Monday, 7 May, 6:15pm

Timaru
Tuesday, 29 May, 7:00pm

Auckland
Monday, 18 June, 6:30pm

Nelson
Thursday, 28 June, 6:00pm

Queenstown
Tuesday, 21 August, 8:15pm

Whanganui
Monday, 10 September, 7:00pm

Waitati
Tuesday, 25 September, 8:00pm

Dunedin
Wednesday, 3 October, 7:30pm
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Palmerston North
Monday, 12 November, 6:00pm
Behold more BEAUTIFUL CREATURES >>