Homage to the Woods

In 2010, with the retrospective devoted to the bear, we proposed to place the true protagonists of mountain life at the centre of attention in the Film Festival della Lessinia. The year 2011, proclaimed the International Year of Forests by the United Nations, has inspired us to focus our attention on the forests and woods that are so often the subject of works shown in a festival dedicated to the mountains. We have seen many stories that take place in and around forests. Of these, we have chosen four, each representative of a corresponding idea about the forest.

The first, which looks at the forest as a natural environment, is the brief documentary by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, who was chosen by the U.N. to make the official video for the International Year of Forests. This work looks at the devastation of this precious ecosystem.

The forest as a place for the soul is evoked by Ermanno Olmi who, inspired by a story by Dino Buzzati, filmed his Il segreto del bosco vecchio amongst the fir and larch trees of the Cadore with the unforgettable Paolo Villaggio who dialogues with the woods, which become both a place and a persona.

The forest as a place of freedom, but also of visions, dreams, and folly, is that of the Amazon forest of Fitzcarraldo, an absolute masterpiece by Werner Herzog, with an extraordinary performance by Klaus Kinski in the role of Brian Sweeny Fitzgerald who seems to find, through music, the only way to converse with himself, the forest, and the people who live there.

Finally, we looked at the woods as the place of fairy tales. Here we must confess that due to complicated and somewhat absurd distribution regulations, we were unable to bring to the Festival the film that we would have most liked to insert in the children’s program, Sleeping Beauty, the most classic of the Disney Classics. We therefore searched for other fables and settled on Rapunzel, a well-known tale from the Brothers Grimm, that was recently released in a new interpretation, this also a Walt Disney production. It seemed to us a fine way and reflect on how even the way fairy tales are told had changed over time.