MOLECOLE

Out of Competition

Biennale College

Andrea Segre

If you were not planning on visiting Venice anytime soon, this sober documentary screened on the first day of the 77th Venice Film Festival is a testimony not only to the changes since 25 February this year but how the tourism in general keeps the city afloat has been decimating. Directed by Andrea Segre Molecole this is also a tribute to his late father Elderico who died of a heart murmur, an avid super 8 filmmaker with clips of his shots of Venice during his teens in the 1960's. He studied free radicals and his son shows this city held up by poles that has been subjected to the invisible world of molecules. We see the Venice before the massive tourist invasion and cruise ship destruction, and life as it was in the 1960's.

A local female gondeller and her relatives steer us around the city including a vist to "Ponta della Salute" - the "maregraphic zero" and benchmark to measure the water surrounding the city. A visit to nearby island Sant'Erasmo illustrates how the fields are being eradicated by high tides.

Though the film pays homage to Camus 'The Stranger' and the alienation of a town that now without tourists is isolated,  it is also a memory of how the 16th century plague devasted the city with 16K deaths. The iconic Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute along the Grande Canal was dedicated to ending this plague.

Just as the grainy remnant of his father's super 8 reels, Segre speaks now only about how the invisible molecules of covid19 are altering human matter but his and his father's beloved Venice.

This indeed was a moving first day film that has set the tone of the festival along with the mask-bearing celebrities and accredited patrons.

Moira Sullivan

Filmfestivals.com

FIPRESCI