Director of Photography
The title Dal polo all'equatore was first used by the pioneering documentary maker, Luca Comerio, for a compilation film of 1925; it was used again by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi for their film of 1985. Much of the original has been re-worked: the 'found footage' has been re-shot, slowed down, tinted, and re-edited with a sound track of minimalist composition. As a result, the exotica of colonial travel and sport take on new and sinister meanings. The acts of violence, especially those of hunting, recur in patterns that suggest visually that war is a logical development. A close examination of the work, starting with the opening sequence of a railway journey, explores the centrality of questions of memory and history to this remarkable and influential film.
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Director
Breaking the Treaty of London Italy occupied the Hungarian Harbour town Rijeka on the coast of Croatia during the last days of the war, ‘liberating’ it from the non-Italian enemy (à choix: Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Croatia, Slovenia). Footage of the celebration of the ‘liberation’, a nightmare that would end only in 1945, shows a happy crowd, women with bunches of flowers, one general gives a speech and the other decorates soldiers. The town was renamed Fiume and soon became the site of a bizarre and frightening episode with poet Gabriele D’Annunzio as the violently narcissistic leader of violently nationalistic irregular troops. Fiume, the place and the name, today signifies the beginning of fascism in Italy.
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Director
A Italian documentary by Luca Comerio.
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A Italian documentary short from 1916.
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Short film by Luca Comerio.
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Director
Cavalry manoeuvres held on July 27, 1912, by the by the Ticino river, in front of the Count of Torino: descent to the Ticino river, pontoon boats transportation, river crossing on horses. This event is documented in various film versions, held by different Italian archives, but with variations in framing, editing and length: probably in all probability, the event was filmed with more than one camera and then published with different editing.
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Early color film documenting the inauguration of the San Marco Campanile.
Director
The Italian conquest of the city of Zuara, in Lybia, during the Italo-Turkish war, is described through its most important moments: the landing on the coast, the advance of the soldiers in the desert, the raising of the flag, the long march towards the oasis that hides the city, the occupation and the return of the victorious troops.
Director
The title Dalla villa reale di Rjeka (Montenegro) is misleading, as it’s attached to a composite film made up of footage shot in 1910 during King Nikola’s coronation in Cettigne and then jumps ahead two years to the winter capital of Rijeka Crnojevića (now a run-down backwater) during the First Balkan War.
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Documentary dedicated to the artillery supplied to the Italian troops in Africa.
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Episode of the series produced by Comerio dedicated to the Italo-Turkish war. It features the departure of Lt. Paolo Solaroli’s body from Africa to Italy.
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A documentary which concentrates on Italian sailors' daily life, on work, physical exercise, leisure moments, battle simulations.
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Director
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Director
This title is the first cinematic testimony relating to Fiat. The film shows the factories of the Turin-based automobile company and the main stages of car production: engine assembly, gearbox assembly, chassis assembly, engine testing and vehicle testing. The final sequence that portrays Fiat employees leaving the factory for their lunch break is very impressive.
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Director
Documentary on the Messina earthquake
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A man picks up a man in drags. Short Italian comedy from 1908.
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Footage of a Milan carneval in 1908
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Director
The energetic advance against the rebels of El-Baruni is a two-part film produced and directed by Luca Comerio in 1912-1913. It belongs to the cycle of the Italo-Turkish War (ie, the cycle of films about the war between the Kingdom of Italy and the Ottoman Empire for the control of Libya). It represents the resistance of the Turkish rebels and the Italian counteroffensive after Ouchy's armistice (October 1912), in which the Italian conquest is sanctioned. Two fragments (respectively 160 and 20 meters in 35mm nitrated film, soaked and tacked), corresponding to the end of the first part and the beginning of the second, were found in Lucinico (Gorizia) and identified in the La Camera Ottica - Film and laboratory Video Restoration of the University of Udine.
