Terra Madre

Mother Earth
by Ermanno Olmi

Italia, 2009
35mm
Colour
Length: 90’
Language: Italian

The first note that Carlo Petrini sent me is dated July 2006. He wrote: “This will be a political and far-sighted film that will allow everyone who is not yet aware of them to find out about the positive examples that the communities of farmers from around the world and the Slow Food Presidia adherents will present at the great Terra Madre 2006 meeting in Turin”. I, of course, was among those who knew nothing about the unity of intentions of this worldwide gathering of small-scale food producers: men and women fighting for their land, resisting the criminal policy of over-exploitation of fertile terrain, the only food resource for all peoples. Here we have heroic evidence of the eternal, faithful alliance with nature and her fruits, between Man and Nature – an alliance without linguistic, ideological, or religious barriers. At the Terra Madre Forum, I recognized the same farmers who used to inhabit the countryside of my childhood. Their faces all looked the same, no matter which corner of the world they came from. On those faces were signs that conjured up a landscape of ploughed fields, lines of trees, wide pastures. Today, the world of farmers is besieged by big business, whose only aim is profit. Farmers, too, want to have a profit, but their attachment to the land is also an act of love: it is in this feeling that respect for Nature lies. I am sure these honest people will never betray their land. As for us, urbanites packed into our cities, deprived of the colors and the scents of seasons, maybe one day we’ll pass by a garden where a grandfather and a little girl are picking the ripe fruits of Nature… Only then will we recognize the true house of Man.

Ermanno Olmi

Director: Ermanno Olmi

With the partecipation of: Franco Piavoli for L’orto di Flora
Photography: Mario Piavoli
Editing: Mario Piavoli

Maurizio Zaccaro
for L’India di Vandana Shiva
Photography: Fabio Olmi

Subject:Carlo Petrini
Editing: Paolo Cottignola
Sound: Francesco Liotard
Producer: Gian Luca Farinelli
Production Company: Cineteca di Bologna

Cineteca di Bologna
Via Riva di Reno, 72
40122 Bologna, Italia
T. +39 051 2194820
F. +36 051 2194821
gianluca.farinelli@comune.bologna.it