Appropriazione 1. Racconti di guerra (2019)

Appropriation 1. War tales is the story of a common man, who, at almost 90 years old, takes stock of his life and of the years he lived during the Fascism and the World War II, when he was a child and then a teenager. But the chronological reconstruction of the events requires a huge effort for the mind, which makes mistakes and confuses the present with the past. This film talks about the effort: the effort to live and to remember. It talks about the weakness within storage systems, unable to keep up with the events. This film comes from the clash between the need for a chronological reconstruction of facts and the fluidity of oral narration, which is based instead on free match of one's thought. But the images of the past, both the ones generated by the mind and the ones generated by the archive, are not just history: our precise editing choices make them part of a discussion on contemporary times. This film tells of little episodes of everyday life, far from the great milestones of history we all know. These episodes influence the civilians' life for a long time. It talks about the past and the present wars: demolition, reconstruction, conservation of the old and reflection on the new. It talks also about overload: digital and mental. It talks, in the end, about how the past should become the key of understanding the present.