A visual love letter to the Sicilian culture and landscape, Sergio Gianfalla’s documentary “Sicily in Photographs” features images taken by a few of the island’s most renowned photographers, including Angelo Pitrone, Melania Messina and Mauro D’Agati, and the stories behind them. The film begins with the photographers talking about what initially sparked their interest in photography and then what fueled their passion to master their craft. We are then taken through the Sicilian countryside for a firsthand look at the natural landscape that has captured their intrigue through the years. “The calling of the lens around here has been irresistible, and it seems that the landscape itself cannot help but pose,” the narrator says. The photographers talk about Sicily’s enchantment seen through their lenses and the lenses of their colleagues and how the landscape has changed through the years. Pitrone talks about the generation of photographers that came before him, including Franco Fontan
When a team of speleologists descended 700 meters into the Bifurto Abyss in Cosenza, Calabria, in 1961, they discovered that the underground caverns were the third deepest in the world and the deepest in Europe. Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Frammartino retraces that mission six decades later with a cast of locals and their livestock in his latest documentary, “Il buco” (“The Hole”). Inspiration for the film came while he was on location shooting his 2007 documentary, “Le quattro volte” (“Four Times”). Officials in the Pollino mountains, which stretch between Calabria and Basilicata, showed him what appeared to be just another sinkhole. Frammartino failed to understand their enthusiasm until they tossed a large stone into the void. It disappeared without making a sound. He was so overcome by the experience and the eerie landscape, he was haunted for years, compelling him to make his current film, one of many rooted in nature. “I was born in Milan, but my family is from Calabria. My pa