La Calabria di Folco Quilici ne 'L'Italia vista dal Cielo' (1968-1976)

Carbone Marco Benoit

Primo

2023-01-01

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Abstract

This article examines the representation of Calabria in Folco Quilici’s documentary series 'L’Italia vista dal Cielo' (1968–1976), focusing on the episode on the Basilicata and Calabria regions. The study situates the series at the intersection of industrial cinema, ethnographic documentary, landscape film, and heritage discourse, highlighting its formal and ideological ambivalences. Through the use of Hélivision aerial cinematography and scripts written in collaboration with prominent intellectuals and writers, the series constructs a visual and narrative exploration of Italy that intertwines natural geography, historical stratification, and cultural practices. Calabria is portrayed as an internal Other within the Italian national space, shaped by geographic isolation, depopulation, and migration, while also being framed through a mythological imaginary rooted in Greater Greece and Mediterranean travel narratives. The article shows how Quilici’s project oscillates between documentary impulses and aestheticized forms of othering, combining social and anthropological concerns with a poetic and sometimes nostalgic vision of the landscape. Within this tension, 'L’Italia vista dal Cielo' emerges as a case study for understanding how Italian documentary cinema engaged with the representation of Southern Italy during the profound social, economic, and cultural transformations of the postwar period.