Terra Madre Mother Earth by Ermanno Olmi with the partecipation of Franco Piavoli 90', Italia, 2009

A far-sighted journey among the people

The first note that Carlo Petrini sent to Ermanno Olmi is dated July 2006. Here began the project for a film dedicated to Terra Madre, a film that was meant to be “political and far-sighted”. Shooting started in Turin in October, 2006, during the Terra Madre International Forum. Seven lightly-equipped crews shot various moments of the Forum in digital format. Most of the crew members - coordinated by Ermanno Olmi - were young members of ipotesICinema, the ‘non-school’ of cinema founded by Olmi, which since 2001 has been based on the grounds of Cineteca of Bologna. Since that Forum, Olmi has been looking for the inner force of the movement, a “behavioral model” that could become the inspirational reference for his work. The faces and the stories of Terra Madre begin and reunite in Turin. From the lookout posts around the Forum, Olmi’s journey continued, reaching the native places of some of Terra Madre’s protagonists. He has oriented the meaning of these stories towards the “political and far-sighted” ending of the documentary.
In February 2008 a crew went to the Svalbard Islands (north of Norway) to film the opening of the World Seed Bank, celebrated by the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso. The crew was denied access to the ceremony, and the images of this event were provided by the Global Group Diversity Trust. In October, 2008, a crew went to Dehradun (in the Uttaranchal region of north of India) to shoot the rice harvest near the Navdanya Farm belonging to Vandana Shiva, where the rice seeds that have been handed down from generation to generation are preserved. These scenes were directed by Maurizio Zaccaro, while Fabio Olmi was the director of photography.

The crew’s last trip was to San Cipriano, near Roncade, in Italy’s Veneto region (October 2008) with the participation of Ermanno Olmi, who directed the shoot and participated in a debate among Vandana Shiva, Carlo Petrini, Angelo Vescovi, Aldo Schiavone, Pier Paolo Poggio, Maurizio Gelati, Marco Rizzone, and Ampelio Bucci.

To tell the story of the man who lived for more than forty years in the same place, which constitutes a location of this section of the documentary, Ermanno Olmi made use of excerpts from the book Un uomo senza desideri (A Man without Desires) by Ignazio Roiter, of photographs by Fulvio Roiter, and of sequences shot by Ignazio Roiter. The common belief that the farmer’s attachment to the land is also an act of love, a feeling that generates respect for Nature, has nourished the collaboration between Ermanno Olmi and Franco Piavoli, who filmed the section L’Orto di Flora in the Adige river valley. Since the conception of Terra Madre, Cineteca of Bologna has been on the front line, as producer of the film along with ITC Movie. Support for the making of this documentary was given by the Ministry for National Heritage and Culture – Direzione Generale per il Cinema and by the Film Commission Torino Piemonte.