ItalianoI fratelli Segreto
22 October 21:30
Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna
Pub Acc
Festa del cinema
Synopsis
Three brothers come out of nowhere, with a name that sounds like an omen: Segreto - secret. From the poverty of late nineteenth-century Italy to the frenzied nights of Rio de Janeiro, the true story of the brothers Pasquale, Gaetano and Alfonso Segreto: migrants, petty criminals, kings of the Carioca nights and the first filmmakers in the history of Brazil. A film about the birth of cinema that sounds like a fairy tale.
COMMENTARY
This is an extraordinary documentary that rewrites the very way cinema has always used repertory images, brought here to truly remarkable clarity. An extremely free and inventive film, in which every scene seems to carry the desire to transform art into life and life into cinema, with a levity that is both melancholy and marvel.
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
In 1881, the teenage brothers Pasquale and Gaetano Segreto leave poverty in Italy behind to build a new life in Rio de Janeiro. Several years later their younger brother Alfonso arrives with a Pathé video camera, and makes the first film in the history of Brazil. The Segreto brothers were the unlikely pioneers of Brazilian cinema.
Directors
Federico Ferrone
He began his career directing, in 2004, the documentary film Banliyö-Banlieue, with Francesco Ragazzi and Constance Rivière. His later films, co-directed with Michele Manzolini, are based on a free-handed re-elaboration of archival material.
Michele Manzolini
In 2007 he directed the documentary Merica, with Federico Ferrone and Francesco Ragazzi, which draws a parallel between Italian emigration in South America in the late nineteenth century and immigration in Italy today. He later made two more films with Ferrone, and in 2024 directed The Best Reward, presented at the Alice nella città sidebar of the Rome Film Fest.