Toronto 2010
North American Premiere
Director Michelangelo Frammartino is available for interviews on September 10 and 11.
A visually stunning, profound, and drily humorous reflection on the cycle of life, and one of the most lauded films in this year’s Quinzaine in Cannes.
Synopsis: An old shepherd lives his last days in a quiet medieval village perched high on the hills of Calabria, at the southernmost tip of Italy. He herds goats under skies that most villagers have deserted long ago. He is sick, and believes to find his medicine in the dust he collects on the church floor, which he drinks in his water every day.
A new goat kid is born. We follow its first few tentative steps, its first games, until it gains strength and goes to pasture. Nearby, a majestic fir tree stirs in the mountain breeze and slowly changes through the seasons. The tree now lies on the ground. It has been reduced to its own skeleton, and is transformed into wood coal through the ancestral work of the local coal makers. Our sight gets lost in the ashes’ smoke. Le Quattro Volte is a poetic vision of the revolving cycles of life and nature and the unbroken traditions of a timeless place. The story of one soul that moves through four successive lives.
About Michelangelo Frammartino
Michelangelo Frammartino was born in Milan in 1968. In 1991, he entered the architecture department of the Politecnico di Milano, where he developed a passion for the relationship between physical space and images, whether photography, video, or film. He realized several video installations (THE EYE AND THE SPIRIT, THE HOUSE OF THE SLEEPING BEAUTIES, FILM) and participated in the experiments of the renowned video art group Studio Azzurro. During his studies, he self-produced a series of short films as well as various arts projects (painted decors, video clips, video installations).
He is regularly invited to universities and participates in an education program whose goal is to act on the relationship between young audiences and television images. These courses inspired video installations shown in 1997 during the first edition of Generazione Media at the Milan Exposition Centre. He regularly participates in conferences on the use of technology in the field of art and conducts workshops, notably at the European Institute of Design of Milan. He teaches cinematographic language and technique at the ENFAP Lombardia, and teaches courses in film language and scriptwriting at the CINELIFE education center. Since 2005, he teaches at the University of Bergamo. In 2003, he directed his first feature film IL DONO (The Gift), which received multiple awards in prominent international film festivals. LE QUATTRO VO LTE is his second feature film.