Directed by Michelangelo Frammartino
Italy | 2022 | Fiction | 93 min | Italian w/ subtitles
Film Source: Grasshopper Films
Sponsored by: 05401
In Il Buco (“The Hole”), director Michelangelo Frammartino re-stages the 1961 discovery of the Bifurto Abyss, one of the deepest caves in the world, located in Italy’s Calabrian plateau. Luxuriating in the sights and sounds of the unspoiled Italian countryside, Frammartino transports the viewer to another time and place with an authenticity typically only achievable in documentary. But Frammartino’s observational approach belies the technical wizardry involved in capturing the speleologists as they descend deeper and deeper into the narrow passages of the cave. It is filmmaking as confounding as it is engrossing. In a parallel plot line, a shepherd watches the discoverers from the hills above, witnessing time pass and the slow creep of modernity. ~TW "Inspired by a 1960s Italian potholing expedition, Michelangelo Frammartino’s almost wordless film is spellbinding." ~Wendy Ide, The Guardian ***Followed by a reception sponsored by Vermont Italian Cultural Association***