close
shape
Almanac
shape
Small format stories
shape
Team and contacts
close
23 October1940
The first bike ride
Author
Olivo Oliviero Mario
Format
16mm
Duration
2'21''
Credits
Music by Cecilia Stacchiotti

Oliviero Mario Olivo has been living in Bologna for some time with his wife Eletta Porta and their two young children, having obtained a job at the university in Emilia after having been Giuseppe Levi's assistant in Turin. Olivo, a pupil of Natalia Levi's father, has made a career for himself and is on the verge of obtaining the chair of human anatomy. Porta also worked with the professor from Turin. This is how they met. Natalia will remember them both. The writer, later known by her married name, Ginzburg, would write about calling her wives by their husbands' surnames ("Lexicon of the Family"): "I got married; and immediately after I got married, my father would say, speaking of me to strangers: 'my daughter Ginzburg'. Because he was always very quick to define changes of situation, and used to immediately give the surname of the husband to women who were getting married. He had two assistants, a man and a woman, who were called, he Olivo, and she Porta. Olivo and Porta later married together. We continued to call them 'Olivo and the Door', however, and my father would get angry every time: - It is no longer the Door! Say the Olivo!". The protagonists of this film are then Olivo, with the couple's two children, Franco and Chiara, who are learning to ride their bicycles through the little-travelled streets of Bologna. It is 23 October 1940, Olivo the father films with a 16mm camera, Olivo assists and helps his children. In the Olivo family lexicon, the camera plays an important role, like the mountains and cycling (which will also be a passion of the third-born Paola, here not yet born).

Share