Storie in 4 lingue

(Stories in Four Languages)
di Erica Barbiani, Elena Vera Tomasin e Sergio Beltrame
50', HDV, Italy, 2006

This film records an entire year in the life of the residents of Malborghetto-Valbruna, a small town in the mountains of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region of Italy, sharing borders with Austria and Slovenia. Four languages and four cultures animate this territory: Friulan, Slovene, German, and Italian. At home and in school, all are spoken, without preference. In fact, it is at school that an effort to retain and protect these tradition that are not folklore or for tourists, but rather truly part of life and cherished by the mountain dwellers. The undisputed protagonists of this vitality are the children who, from an early age, are immersed in this dynamic, lively environment. Thus school becomes the laboratory where they experiment this cultural richness, because here diversity is regarded as enrichment, emancipation, and knowledge of self, and multi-lingual culture is seen a precious gift.

Erica Barbiani, Elena Vera Tomasin and Sergio Beltrame
In 2004 Sergio Beltrame, journalist and teacher in Udine, Erica Barbiani, sociologist, and Elena Vera Tomasin, anthropologist, combined their academic and audiovisual production knowledge to found Videomante, a cooperative  that produces documentaries of socio-anthropological interest.