The Dreams of the Lake
Synopsis
Kazakhstan is currently experiencing an economic euphoria unlike anything Italy experienced in the 1960s, driven by oil and gas extraction, with ENI at the forefront. Traveling between the steppes and the ultra-modern Astana, the film intertwines the stories of farmers, young female workers, and Italians working in the oil fields with archival images of Italy’s economic boom. A dialogue between past and present, between dreams and recurring transformations.
The images of the great Eurasian steppes, the infinite, orderly spaces of the post-Soviet lands, intertwine in the film and in the author’s mind with images of Italy in the 1960s, found both in ENI’s archives and in the personal archives shot by Andrea Segre’s mother and father, who, in their twenties, experienced the euphoria of growth in the 1960s.
Trailer
Director’s vision
If I had listened to reason, I probably wouldn’t have left. I wasn’t looking for anything specific.
In this film, more than in many others, I simply followed desire and instinct. This is the privilege of documentary filmmaking. This is the emotion of documentary filmmaking. A freedom of gaze and skin, which I will always strive to pursue.
I wanted to go to Kazakhstan. To lose myself in borderlands, in horizons so broad they become intimate. “Dreams of the Salt Lake” are dreams I sought in the Asian steppes and then rediscovered in my uncle Alberto’s cellar (a cousin, he would call it), where small, ancient dreams are preserved in 8mm films from 50 years ago.
They are dreams that humanity cyclically tries to dream, without having the courage to stop, to ask what is left behind. In recent years, these dreams have accelerated to such an extent that for my generation, it has become necessary to start asking ourselves this question. We are counting our wounds and we want to stop. We want to avoid accepting that horizons are limited to the need to grow. Sozial, a shepherd on the shores of the Caspian Sea, taught me this, during last winter’s first snowstorm. In Kazakhstan. Not so far from here.
The DVD of “Dreams of the Salt Lake” is available at the ZaLab shop.
Credits
Festivals and prizes
2015: Dreams of the Salt Lake was awarded Best Documentary at the Freistadt Film Festival.
During the Austrian festival, now in its twenty-ninth year and held from August 24th to 28th in the Austrian town of Freistadt, the international jury awarded Dreams of the Salt Lake the prize for Best Documentary, ex-aequo with the Bosnian film Korida, by Sinisa Vidovic.
The jury for the documentary section was composed of Tamara Danicic (Germany), Markus Kaiser-Mühlecker (Director, Austria), and Liwaa Yazji (Director, Syria). The award was accepted by Sergio Marchesini, who, with Piccola Bottega Baltazar, composed the soundtrack for Dreams of the Salt Lake..
