These Encounters of Theirs

There are ten performers in the film. None of them is a professional. All come from an amateur theatre group in Tuscany. They are divided into pairs. Each pair takes a turn reading the text. The text comes from a book by Cesare Pavese, the Dialogues with Leucò. It is abstract and philosophical writing. The performers deliver it flatly, without rhetoric. The camera stays fixed. The takes are long. The image is in the old ratio, close to a square. The film ran in competition at the sixty third Venice Film Festival, where it took a special Lion for innovation in the language of cinema. Angela Nugara, Vittorio Vigneri and Grazia Orsi appear in the sixty eight minute film, an Italian and French production Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub finished in 2006.