Ten years after village doc Le Quattro Volte, Michelangelo Frammartino returns with an observational piece centring on a deep-cave system in Calabria
In 2011 Italian artist Michelangelo Frammartino scored a small indie hit with a film called Le Quattro Volte, a metaphysical study of a mountain village that featured bleating goats and ringing bells, charcoal burners and Roman centurions. Le Quattro Volte was odd and gentle and by and large people loved it. I’m not sure how much money one earns from a small indie hit. Probably enough to pay for a weekend break in Tropea. Now Frammartino is back – 10 years later, not wanting to rush things – with the lovely Il Buco, another film that is content to saunter on the wild side, gazing at woods and sky, rocks and trees and identifying a serene, quiet heaven in everything that it sees. It’s not quite a documentary, yet nor is it exactly a narrative feature. It lives alone; the cinematic equivalent of a hermit on a mountaintop.
Frammartino’s last film was inspired by Pythagoras. This one takes its prompt from a 1961 potholing expedition in Calabria, mapping out a labyrinthine cave system which was confirmed at the time as the third deepest in the world. The film shows the cavers descending its slick twists and turns and uncovering an old photo and a damp magazine with JFK on the cover. Whatever item slips into the crevasse instantly becomes history, or a lost memory; a teasing remnant of the people who once walked above.