Cesare Pavese

You Burn Me

An adaptation of “Sea Foam”, a chapter from Cesare Pavese’s “Dialoghi con Leucò” published in 1947. The ancient Greek poet Sappho and the nymph Britomartis meet beside the sea and have a conversation about love and death. Sappho is said to have thrown herself into the ocean from lovesickness. Britomartis apparently tumbled off a cliff and into the water while fleeing from a man. Together, the two discuss the stories and images that have emerged around them to try and understand, at least for a moment, the bittersweet nature of desire.

Dialogues After the End

Pavese considered Dialogues with Leucò his best work. Eloquent and at the same time sententious and fragile, but implausible among humanized gods, demigods, heroes, and other pagan figures of Greek mythology, who question, through the imaginary of myths, the society of contemporary man. Out of a time and a certain space, and thus, and like all myths, always current.

Socialist Realism

A satirical take on President Salvador Allende's Popular Unity process prior to the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. The film is made up of a series of short stories, in which different worlds cross paths.

The Beautiful Summer

Set during a “beautiful summer” in Turin in 1938, against the backdrop of Fascist-era Italy’s subsequent entry into World War II. sees the 18-year-old Cassell as the uninhibited model Amelia. She introduces her younger friend Ginia to a world of bohemian artists where she will fall in love for the first time.

It's Me!

For him it was just an affair, for her it was the love of her life. And now she is in Rome to see him, to put pressure on him, to threaten with suicide...

La Madre

Inspired by a Cesar Pavese’s short story, this film has as its main question the relationship with the mother. After killing someone, Meleagros is killed by his own mother, from whom he had never disconnected.

L'Inconsolable

With L’inconsolable, Jean-Marie Straub continues the mise en scène of Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucò, initiated in 1978 with Dalla nube alla resistenza and followed up in 2006, 2007 and 2008 with Quei loro incontri, Artemis’s Knee and Le streghe – femmes entre elles. L’inconsolable is a reflection on the myth of Orpheus.

The Witches, Women Among Themselves

Another adaptation from Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucò (following "From the Clouds to the Resistance", "These Encounters of Theirs" and "Artemis' Knee".

Artemide's Knee

Jean-Marie Straub's first film after the death of Danièlle Huillet is a love poem to her. Le Genou d'Artémide is based on Cesare Pavese's "Dialogues of Leuco", which had already been adapted by Straub et Huillet as Ces Rencontres Avec Eux (2006).

These Encounters of Theirs

These Encounters Of Theirs divides 10 non-professional actors into couples, then has them take turns in declaiming the Dialogues With Leuco, Cesare Pavese's abstract, philosophical work.

From the Clouds to the Resistance

'Dalla nube alla resistenza (From the Cloud to the Resistance ) (1978), based on two works by Cesare Pavese, falls into the category of History Lessons and Too Early, Too Late as well. It, too, has two parts—a twentieth-century text and a text regarding the myths of antiquity, each set in the appropriate landscape. Pavese's The Moon and the Bonfires looks back on the violent deaths of Italian anti-Fascist resistance fighters; Dialogues with Leucò is a series of dialogues between heroes and gods, connecting myth and history and returning to an ambiguous stage in the creation of distinctions, such as that between animal and human, which are fundamental to grammar and language itself. Such a juxtaposition of political engagement with profoundly contemplative issues such as myth, nature, and meaning points to the characters of Empedocles and Antigone in the Hölderlin films.' (From "Landscapes of resistance. The German Films of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub" by Barton Byg)

Le Amiche

Clelia, a self-made woman coming from humble means, travels back to Turin, her hometown, to scout locations for the successful Roman atelier she works for. At the hotel, she encounters some upper middle-class women and she finds herself drawn into their friendships.

Escape to France

A former Fascist takes his son and escapes across the border into France, where he tries to avoid being recognized and having to pay for his wartime crimes.