Luigi Di Gianni, graduated from the Experimental Center of Cinematography in Rome in 1954, won the first prize in 1958 at the Venice Film Festival with the documentary Magia Lucana, with the scientific advice of Ernesto de Martino.
He is a prolific director of films and documentaries and University Professor. Many of his festivals have been held at the Italian Institutes of Culture in Vienna, Monaco, Cologne, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki. In 2002, a retrospective program of five of his documentaries was presented at the Berlinale.
His memories related to food are a koine of the remote lands of the South, and the area of land of work; two regions, Campania and Basilicata, look tied by a trail of smells and tastes as simple as bread and flour, cherry tomatoes and Calabrian chili.
The director reconstructs a culinary identity through anecdotes, memories and flavors; from the Fifties, in a land of a forgotten South, until present. The simplicity of homemade and popular flavors as a metaphor of the existence. “Bread – Di Gianni says – is a spiritual and material element.”
Interview by: Annalisa RascatoVideo by: Mariaelena Assante. Editing Video: Roberta Campassi
Subtitles by: Francesca Magnani
Document by: Annalisa Rascato
MedEatResarch – Center of Social Research on the Mediterranean Diet of the University of Naples Suor Orsola Benincasa, head by Marino Niola and Elisabetta Moro
Realized: 18-07-2012
