Isole nella laguna

This is quite an interesting documentary that depicts a Venice that is pretty unrecognisable when compared with the bustling, developed, city now - eighty-odd years later. The lagoon is populated by small boats, the islands by goats and lace-makers. The gulls fly, undisturbed, over the waterways that still show the marker poles to guide the sailing boats from the shoals and shallow water. The Murano glass artists are hard at work turning everything from a bowl to a fully-fledged chandelier and the whole experience, here, is a leisurely paced and relaxed experience depicting just how post war Venice seems little changed over centuries. The narrative is little dry, the score a bit on the soporific side - but it's still a pleasing piece of simply edited, single-camera nostalgia.

This is a short film, some thirteen or fourteen minutes only and appears to have won a documentary prize somewhere. "Isole nella laguna" refers to islands in the lagoon - in this case the islands around Venice. The copy I caught on YouTube was narrated in Italian only with no translation available but the Italian was slow, artistic and well-pronounced and shouldn't discourage those with somewhat of an acquaintance with the language. The images are phenomenal throughout with water and land constantly paired and compared and death not too far in the background. The musical score was composed by someone with a Slavic name and sounds distinctly non-Italian with a Germanic late-Romantic sadness. This is wonderful work and a quite untraditional tour of the backroads of a great city.

Curtis Stotlar