Chiara Caterina
Il mondo o niente / Le monde ou rien - Film - 45min - 2017
presented as part of the exhibition panorama 19
“But closed in one room, a world apart, I am glad to travel in my memory to that other world, hedged in by custom and sorrow, cut off from History and the State, eternally patient, to that land without comfort or solace [...].”
Carlo Levi
Il mondo o niente is this isolated and fantasised about southern Italy, made up of black veils and processions, of clay earth and of Carlo Levi’s “severe villages on the tops of their hills.”
But this other world is very near, dissected by a modernity that has short-circuited an idealised archaism: the peasants have iPhone 6s and the wolves respond to the sound of a megaphone, while mysterious machines observe the stars and a sprawling petroleum plant empoisons the region’s waters.
Il mondo o niente is a disappearing trace, a camera that takes only the peripheral byways, drifting from one stratum to another, mapmaking the secret links of this hemmed-in territory.
From one dawn to the next, from the summit of the mountains to underground tunnels, the film surveys and encounters, little by little effacing imaginary landscapes so as to better explore the seams of a world-fabric.
Clara Chapus
Chiara Caterina
After studying the history of cinema at Rome University and training as a camerawoman, Chiara Caterina is currently on a post-diploma course at Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains. Her short film Avant la nuit and her medium-length film Il mondo o niente have been shown at several international festivals. She is interested mainly in the exploration of non-fiction cinema and documentary practices.
