Crossing the Line

The documentary is a journey through Italian landscapes seen from the window of a long distance train. The camera mostly stays behind the glass; passing towns, fields, stations and the people in the carriage come one after another. The account constructs no subject, gives the journey itself as duration, and leaves the work of looking to the viewer. Who is sitting on the train, who gets off and who spends the night there slowly turns into a portrait. Despite its short length of sixty minutes it is in no hurry. Pietro Marcello’s sixty minute Italian documentary was completed in 2007 and is among the director’s early works.