In the early 1970s, two Italian filmmakers met pregnant, 16-year-old Anna, a junky, on the Piazza Navone in Rome. One of them took her under his wing, partly out of pity, partly due to opportunism - thinking ‘there’s a great film in this’. They film her slow recovery from feral homeless person to human being, initially using a film camera and later on video - which, at the time, was a novelty. Alberto Grifi turned the 11 hours of material shot by the duo into a four-hour film and transferred the video onto 16mm film.
Anna is more than cinema vérité, it is a reflection on the camera’s role in documentary filmmaking whereby the crew also have their say. The long takes create a fascinating portrait of the dynamic between filmmaker and subject, and the work also documents a society very similar to today’s - rife with political and social discontent.
Anna was recently restored by film lab L'Immagine Ritrovata and can now be seen with subtitles outside Italy for the first time.
- Directors
- Alberto Grifi, Massimo Sarchielli
- Country of production
- Italy
- Year
- 1975
- Festival Edition
- IFFR 2012
- Length
- 225'
- Medium
- DCP
- Language
- Italian
- Producers
- Alberto Grifi, Massimo Sarchielli
- Sales
- Cineteca Nazionale
- Screenplay
- Massimo Sarchielli, Roland Knauss
- Cinematography
- Alberto Grifi, Mario Gianni, Raoul Calabrò
- Production Design
- Massimo Sarchielli, Alberto Grifi
- Sound Design
- Raoul Calabrò, Agostini, Ponchia
- Cast
- Massimo Sarchielli, Vincenzo Mazza
- Website
- http://www.albertogrifi.com