I Villani
Synopsis
Popular Italian cuisine, loved and imitated all over the world, is dying. But many are trying to save it. The film follows four characters from sunrise to sunset, from the beginning to the end of their workday. The passing hours mark the introduction of each character. They are initially seen in their own spaces, performing their tasks, before delving into their daily hardships. As the sun sets, the solution emerges through their ethics, their knowledge, the community they create, and the legacy they leave behind. Four characters were chosen to represent Italian cuisine, respecting the various characteristics that make it up: North and South, men and women, young and old. Four “villani” who talk about agriculture, fishing, animal husbandry, cheese, and family cooking. Four characters whose daily lives represent the synthesis of endless resistance and reluctance to adopt a uniform gastronomic and cultural model worldwide. Four characters with their families, to verify if Italian cuisine is still a living heritage, if the passing of knowledge between generations still exists, and if the Italian cuisine as we inherited it will be saved or disappear.
THE IDEA
What is Italian cuisine? How was it built over time? What happened to the Italian cultural heritage with the advent of modernity? What consequences have the changes in eating habits, the globalization of trade, and health regulations had on all the traditional practices at the base of Italian gastronomy? This series of questions is addressed through encounters with the characters amidst kitchens, countryside, and markets, in their social life and daily practices. In their cooking, a great humanity emerges in understanding food not merely as an act of sustenance, but a social one, therefore not detached from life’s problems; born of family and collective knowledge and practice, accessible to anyone of any social class, and which cannot be ignored, lest it face extinction. There is an intrinsic coherence in every step of what I would call a family supply chain, from the seed preserved for generations to the rearing of pigs for the needs of the whole winter, ending with the respect for times and ingredients in the kitchen, in a continuous handover between grandmothers and grandfathers, sons, daughters, and grandchildren. But the contemporary world has broken a cultural attitude that allowed anyone in the community to know how to eat well, jeopardizing not only the tools for their own supply and sustenance, but inexorably affecting the cognitive mechanisms that underpinned that knowledge, which was both collective and individual. The economic terms regulating the production and sale of ingredients have changed; they are no longer products intended for feeding mankind, but economic products governed by the standard rules of the current market. The way of understanding nutrition has changed, caught between health-consciousness, hygiene obsession, consumerism, and homogenization. Each of these aspects becomes an act regulated by norms that, in practice, no longer allow agriculture, fishing, and cooking to be carried out in the way they have always been understood. Consequently, these women and men, in their daily opposition to the evolution of the current idea of food and its consequences on the economy, are a testament to a different way of understanding food. It is precisely in their everyday life, in their relationships, in their kitchens, and in the people they meet that one notices their ability to turn this intrinsic resistance into a collective practice, in opposition to a system that wanted them subjugated, homogenized, distorted, and marginalized. Thus emerges another model of relating to food and nature, another possible way of seeing food, and therefore the world.
CHARACTERS
Modesto Silvestri, in his forties. Breeder, and his eighteen-year-old daughter Brenda. Irpinia He cuts open a brightly colored provolone with a long knife. The provolone resists and he says: “It has a hard head, just like me.”
Salvatore Fundarò known as Totò, 27 years old. Farmer and storyteller. Alcamo – Sicily He picks two lemons from the tree in his garden, places them in a crate, sits down, smiles, grabs his guitar and starts playing a folk song learned from his grandfather.
Luigina Speri, 60 years old. Farmer and breeder. Pasubio Mountains – Trentino She gathers wild herbs that she neatly places in crates to take to the city market and says: “In the end, I managed to realize this dream of being a farmer, because it is a dream, the dream of a woman.”
Michele and Santino Galasso, 50-year-old brothers. Fishermen and mussel farmers. Taranto – Puglia Michele and Santino get together with others to play scopa after their day at sea, cooling off with a beer: “Fishing is dying, but we won’t die of seawater.”
Lino Maga. Winemaker. Oltrepò Pavese Loved by Pertini, Veronelli, and Brera, he is a pioneer of natural wines. To buy his wines, nothing is better than paying him a visit. He is the narrator of the story.
Trailer
Director’s vision
“These people shared with me their way of being in the world, their relationship with the land and the history of the place where they were born. It was in this delicate interweaving—sometimes ironic, sometimes painful—between the intimate stories of their lives and the way they cooked with skill, intelligence, and keen observation that the deepest essence of Italian cuisine emerged: wise, flavorful, thrifty, and respectful of the produce of the land and sea. Through their confident movements, these people showed me just how radically modernity clashed with that culture. A conflict that went to the heart of the matter. To eat well, one must respect the rhythms of cooking; one must respect the seasons, the land, and the sea—all things modernity no longer does. What emerges is a clash between the two sides, a form of resistance, and a proposal for a new way of living that, while anchored in the past, becomes vital and relevant today. Throughout fifteen years of work creating books and performances that merged cooking and art, I recounted this exploration from a personal perspective, revealing my own view of what cooking meant to me. What moved me—and what I want to share—is the existence of people who are truly capable of creating and recreating the act of cooking, and of building a living body of knowledge around that act. Their existence takes precedence over my own interpretation; I want to place my gaze alongside theirs, allowing my own ideals—and, ultimately, my political convictions—to meet their everyday reality of gestures, places, faces, and words. Documentary filmmaking is the tool that allows this encounter to happen: I do not abandon my own perspective, but rather let it live within their reality. That is why this film comes at the end of a long period of research—a time after which I finally want to spend time with the people this long journey allowed me to discover. It is as if, until now, I had merely grazed them, savored them. Now, I want to be with…” “…with them, and together with them, to let the narrative and the meaning grow. Within myself and towards the audience.”
Daniele De Michele
Credits
Festivals and prizes
The film *I villani* by Daniele De Michele received the Italian Federation of Film Clubs–Il Giornale del Cibo Special Mention, awarded to “the work featuring the most significant scene related to food and nutrition” at the 75th Venice International Film Festival.
