Filmhouse/New Kalamata Cinema Club-LA TERRA TREMA

Greedy wholesalers have been exploiting fishermen for generations in a small fishing village on the eastern coast of Sicily. Young Donny Valastro convinces his family to mortgage their house so they can buy their own fishing boat and never work for the wholesalers again. One day, despite a raging storm, Donny is forced to go fishing so he won't delay paying off the debt.

The narrative has the actual inhabitants of a small Italian village, Aci Trezza, as its central characters near Catania. It describes their everyday lives and the daily struggle for survival that the fishermen and their families wage. The fishing ritual, Donny Valastro and his family, the local dialect and the melancholy songs, the "actors" who play themselves, who "play" their lives, the camera's wandering in the suffocating space of the coastal community, the merciless exploitation of the fishermen's labour by the wholesalers, their rebellion.

By witnessing an entire era and shocking evidence of the struggle for survival, the film's images have the power of tragedy, where destiny crushes man. The narrative episodes, without being indifferent to the laws and rules of the dramatic plot, are suspended between documentary and fiction: they record reality with the brutality of a documentary and narrate people's life stories.

The Earth Tremble, a landmark film for Italian neorealism, won the Golden Lion in Venice in 1948

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19th
LA TERRA TREMA
Drama | 13+ | 1948 | It | 160’
Director: Luchino Visconti
Starring: Luchino Visconti, Antonio Pietrangeli, Antonio Arcidiacono
21:00 | General admission is 5 euros, admission is 3 euros for the unemployed and families with many children and students, and admission is free for those under 18.