Southern Italian Goats (Not Mine) Star in Cannes Award-Winning Film
*The full post appears at Bleeding Espresso, but I thought my goat-loving friends would also enjoy so I’m mentioning it here as well.*
Le Quattro Volte courtesy of MUBI
Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times), a film set in Calabria by director Michelangelo Frammartino, won the 2010 Europa Cinemas Label as Best European Film in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. From the trailer and clips I have seen, it beautifully captures the simplicity of life in this gorgeous land I’m proud to call home while effectively relating the universal idea that each of us has “four distinct lives [mineral, vegetable, animal, and man] and so we have to get to know ourselves four times” (my translation from the official trailer below).
The fact that the story revolves around a goatherd isn’t exactly lost on me either.
A description of the film from Tim Lloyd at AdelaideNow:
An old goatherd takes his flock to feed in the high pastures of Calabria then milks them at his stalls at a spectacular hilltop village, where the rhythm and ritual of life appears unchanged in centuries. His cure-all for his failing health is the blessed ash from ceremonies at the local church. He dies, and at his death a newborn goat takes its first breath. It suits the off-beat and curiously satisfying vision of the film, that the goatherd is resurrected as a goat, then as a tree, and eventually as a mineral.
Le Quattro Volte was also named one of the nine best films for 2011 by the Guardian. For more information, be sure to click over to Le Quattro Volte: Cannes Winner Beautifully Describes Calabrian (and Universal) Life — Without Words.
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