LA CREAZIONE DI SIGNIFICATO

(THE CREATION OF MEANING)

LA CREAZIONE DI SIGNIFICATO (THE CREATION OF MEANING) film poster

La creazione di significato (The Creation of Meaning) is set in the Tuscan Alps, where German occupying forces massacred hundreds of civilians during WWII, and follows the daily life of Pacifico, a shepherd born in the wake of the war among those same breathtaking landscapes. Blurring fiction, documentary and collaborative ethnographic observation, the film explores the transient nature of meaning by glimpsing at what Borges calls an Aleph, an allegorical singularity in space and time where past, present and future overlap and intertwine.

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Simone Rapisarda Casanova

Italy/Canada, 2014

90 min, Colour, Mono

“remarkable for its vibrancy and generosity, […] full of wry humour and rich with unexpected pleasures and marvels”

‑ Jason Anderson (Cinema Scope)


“shot with a painterly Renaissance beauty, [...] its stirring power lies in the intimacy of detail and wry political observation”

‑ Joshua Siegel (MoMA)


“both poetic and philosophical […] a sumptuous work of film aesthetics”

‑ Peter Dickinson (Anthropologica)


powerful and delicate”

‑ A. O. Scott (The New York Times)


“majestic”

‑ Melissa Anderson (The Village Voice)


a surreal, mesmerizing gem”

‑ Emily Buder (IndieWire)


ravishing”

‑ Neil Young (The Hollywood Reporter)


bold and daring”

‑ James Hansen (Filmmaker Magazine)


“mesmerizing”

‑ Nicolas Rapold (The New York Times)


“a lovely, laidback reverie”

‑ Ronnie Scheib (Variety)


“transcendent”

‑ Benjamin Mercer (Brooklyn Magazine)


“organically funny and admirably cohesive”

‑ Vadim Rizov (Filmmaker Magazine)


“as mystically ethereal as vividly earthy”

‑ Christopher Bourne (Twitch)


“delightfully contemplative”

‑ Maria Garcia (Film Journal International)


“simultaneously heady and lyrical”

‑ Carson Lund (Slant Magazine)


“both imposing and intimate, it subtly blurs the boundaries between heaven and earth, past and present, naturalism and existentialism”

‑ Charlotte Bonmati-Mullins (Point de vues)


“it devises a way of seeing that is both oneiric and anthropological”

‑ Helen Faradji (24images)


“directed with a precision that makes highly ordered mise-en-scènes appear loose and impromptu”

‑ Clayton Dillard (Slant Magazine)


“a flattening of time and space by means of timeless beauty itself, [...] constructed from breathtaking images and a wonderful softness of direction”

- Daniel Walber (Nonfics)

Awards and honours

2015    Rotten Tomatoes 100% Rating

            Critics RoundUp Top 50 Films of 2015

            Best of Festival Award, Ann Arbor Film Festival

            Best Film Award, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival

            Golden Apricot Award, Yerevan International Film Festival

2014    Nominee, Golden Leopard Award, Locarno Film Festival

            Nominee, Best Italian Documentary Film Award, Torino Film Festival


Screenings (selected)

2018    CASCA-CUBA Film Festival

            NYU Shanghai Social Science School

            Institute of Anthropology - East China Normal University

2015    MoMA (one-week theatrical release)

            Washington DC National Gallery of Art

            New Directors/New Films - MoMA/Film Society of Lincoln Center

            Ann Arbor Film Festival

            Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival

            International Film Festival Rotterdam

            Moscow International Independent Film Festival

            FilmFest Hamburg

            London Open City Documentary Festival 

            Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival

            Greek Film Archive

            Jeonju National Intangible Heritage Centre

            Yerevan International Film Festival

            Ljubljana International Film Festival

2014    Locarno International Film Festival

            Vancouver International Film Festival

            Montreal Festival du nouveau cinéma

            Viennale International Film Festival

            Doclisboa International Film Festival

            Mar del Plata International Film Festival

            Torino Film Festival

            São Paulo International Film Festival