NB: The film is entirely in Italian, with subtitles available in Italian and English, selectable from the player
Note by Peter Englesson:
During the last During my semester at the National Film School in Stockholm, I won a scholarship to travel and visit a film set of my choice.
Björn Blixt, who had graduated from the Film School a year earlier, had in the meantime come into contact with Pasqualino De Santis, who invited him to visit the set of Christ stopped at Eboli.
Björn called me right away and asked if I wanted to come with him.
Of course I wanted to! I had already read Carlo Levi's novel.
We'd been invited to visit the set, but we jumped at the chance and brought some equipment with us. I had the opportunity to borrow some audio equipment from the Film School, and in Rome we rented a movie camera.
Swedish Television generously offered us ten reels of 16mm film, which corresponded to approximately 120 minutes of “raw material” for the documentary.
In April 1978, we took the train from Stockholm to Matera: a very long and complicated journey at the time. We managed to arrive just in time for the start of filming.
Since we'd only had brief conversations with Pasqualino and didn't speak a word of Italian anyway, we were a little shy at first and kept to ourselves.
But no one objected to our presence, and then we began to be more active.
One day, producer Norman (the only one in the group who spoke English) came to us and told us that Gian Maria Volonté wanted to interview us. Since neither of us spoke Italian, he said he could do the interview without asking any questions, but by interviewing himself.
So we had the unique opportunity to interview Gian Maria Volonté without knowing what he was talking about. Of course, we then had everything translated when we edited the film.
A few years later, Francesco Rosi came to Copenhagen for a masterclass at the Danish Film School, and I was able to interview him specifically about the filming of "Christ Stopped at Eboli." This time, I had prepared my questions, and Francesco proved to be very generous and open-minded during our meeting.
The documentary "Rosi about Eboli" was shown only once on ST, Swedish Television. The print of the film then disappeared. Now, 44 years later, we have restored the film from a videocassette.
We hope this story helps to illustrate Francesco Rosi's great generosity in inviting younger generations to visit his set without hesitation.
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Rosi about Eboli, in its recovered version, was premiered as the opening film of the 2022 edition diLa suitcase of theactor,the festival directed by Giovanna Gravina Volontè and Fabio Canu which takes place annually on theisland of La Maddalena, which was the last home of Gian Maria Volontè, to whom the festival is dedicated.
in collaboration with
National Museum of Cinema in Turin
