Painters recognize his superiority in literature and men of letters praise his artistic greatness: in both cases, Carlo Levi's skill is always discussed.
Lucus a Lucendo. About Carlo Levi aims to chronicle the relevance of one of the most influential intellectuals of the 20th century, to disseminate and transmit his cultural universe.
The film's narrator and narrator is Stefano Levi Della Torre, a painter and Carlo's nephew, who is searching for a subject for his blank canvas that can embody the symbols of Levi's political and artistic commitment.
A research that takes him between Piedmont, Paris, Lucania, Rome, on a physical and interior journey into the world of Levi during the most difficult years of Italian history, years that Carlo lived and recounted with his art.
Writer – world-famous for his masterpiece Christ stopped at Eboli, and other important novels and essays – painter, doctor, politician by passion condemned to confinement, anthropologist and poet by vocation.
The film follows its various tensions and returns to make a current and more than original, unique voice heard.
DIRECTOR'S NOTES
The research for the documentary began in Basilicata, an introverted place that for years we experienced as an observatory on the contemporary world. While initially a taste for a certain type of ordinary landscape moved us, later anthropological, literary, and social history motivations became layered. Then came my return to Lucania, where I moved to an abandoned village to study its crumbling architecture. That village was located within the geography of Carlo Levi's exile, where the characters and atmosphere were still vivid. Thus began a search not only for my roots, but also a pretext to discover a line that extends from southern Italy to France and passes through the central place of my education: Turin. In this discovery of Levi's legacy, Stefano Levi is a privileged narrator: the interpreter of a story suspended between past and present, and a gateway to a new search for meaning for those who inhabit those dark and painful territories, buried in the silence of history. Thus, from Carlo Levi's travel memoirs, we resurface the idea of a forest so dense that no light filters through, a space in which to experience the knowledge of others in order to better understand oneself. A revelatory element, therefore, that becomes a lucus a lucendo, or a place for light to be. (Alessandra Lancellotti)
We began filming in 2015 with the old Arri BL 16mm, directly following a wind that was also turning, coming from the south. A previously unknown force drew us among votive gullies. I heard voices leaking from the walls of the houses, at night, in the dark hour of midday, and I carried them all the way north and had to discover what they were. From that moment on, it was a succession of readings of countless texts, the creation of a section of the library, constant trips to France, especially by train from Turin, and to Italy, almost everywhere where Carlo's legacy was felt: Trieste, Florence, Rome, Bologna, Turin, Milan, Naples, Sardinia, Sicily, and then Germany, Paris, Brittany, and New York, with the American cover he painted for a book by Mario Soldati, asking the Carabinieri to wait a moment so he could complete it before arresting him. Levi's presence is so vast that it becomes almost immanent for us, a positive disease of knowledge, of love for the world, of critique and contemplation of its diverse forms, its "mirroring divergences." Lucus a Lucendo is a documentary on the twentieth century, starting with one of its great protagonists. Alessandra Lancellotti and Stefano Levi Della Torre are the transfers, the incarnations for this journey. (Enrico Masi)
