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02 November1965
The living and the dead
Author
Don Vitalini
Format
8mm
Duration
2'22''
Credits
Music by Guglielmo Pagnozzi

"Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord" in Stazzona, in S. Rocco, over all the Earth". On 2 November 1965, Don Cirillo Vitalini invokes the repose of the dead on the day dedicated to them and films (or has asked someone to film) the procession of the living at the cemetery in Stazzona, Valtellina. Don Vitalini (1915-2003) is a very active and well-known priest in the area, remembered as a rescuer of persecuted Jews during the war. He is also a priest with an 8mm camera, filming for over thirty years, between the end of the 1950s and the 1990s, his community, religious rites, peasant work, children's education, and life in the valleys and forests, returning on film a rich picture of minor stories and narratives. No one is excluded from this choral tale, among fields, houses, church steeples, churchyards and cemetery gravestones. All imprinted on film, for future memory. "From all evil, from eternal death... Deliver us!...". An invocation to God, but also to cinema in small gauge format.

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