One of the most adventurous new filmmakers from Italy, Simone Rapisarda Casanova presents the MoMA weeklong theatrical run of his second documentary-fiction hybrid, winner of the 2014 Locarno Film Festival’s Best Emerging Director prize and a major discovery in the 2015 edition of New Directors/New Films. Though its title arcs toward grand philosophical inquiry, the stirring power of The Creation of Meaning lies in its intimacy of detail and wry political observation. Shot with a painterly Renaissance beauty in Tuscany’s remote Apennine mountains, where memories of Nazi massacres and partisan resistance remain vivid, the film centers on Pacifico Pieruccioni, an aging but defiant shepherd whose very livelihood and traditions are threatened by a New European reality of Berlusconi-caliber corruption (hilariously evoked in a profanity-laden radio-talk-show rant) and German land speculation.
Organized by Joshua Siegel, Curator, Department of Film.
