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Wigwam (Shining Ray) The Bridge Breakers Rain We Are Building Philips Radio Creosote Komsomol (Song of Heroes) New Earth Borinage The Spanish Earth The 400 Million Power and the Land Indonesia Calling The First Years Song of the Rivers The Seine Meets Paris Before Spring Italy Is Not a Poor Country Travel Notebook A Valparaiso The Mistral Pour le Mistral Far from Vietnam The 17th Parallel How Yukong Moved the Mountains A Tale of the Wind Magnitogorsk, Forging the New Man		Italy Is Not a Poor Country L'Italia non e un paese povero 1960 / Italy / B&W / 110 min / 35mm Director: Joris Ivens Script: Joris Ivens, Valentino Orsini, Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani Camera: Mario Dolci, Oberdan Troiani, Mario Volpi Editors: Joris Ivens, Maria Rosada Music: Gino Marinuzzi Commentary: Alberto Moravia, Corrado Sofia; spoken by Enrico M. Salerno Producer: Federico Valli Production company: PROA Commissioned by: ENI Another Ivens film that tries to depict industrial progress. Ivens was commissioned by Enrico Mattei, head of the Italian oil company ENI to make a film showing the benefits to Italy of oil exploration. The film was meant to present Mattei's vision to a television audience. The film is in three parts. Part one, "Fire in the Po Valley," is about the recovery and distribution of methane in the Po Valley. The second part is itself divided into two. The first half is devoted to the cities of Venice and Ravenna and the production of gas. The second half, "Story of Two Trees," shows the impoverished life of seven peasant families all dependant for fuel on one olive tree. Their lives are contrasted to the future benefits of the so-called "Christmas trees": metal constructs with permanent flames for controlling the gas outlets. The third and final part of the film focuses on the marriage of a Sicilian girl to a Northern Italian man working on an offshore oil rig. Ivens uses some then-innovative techniques in the film, such as hand-held cameras, high-speed film, and television-style interview techniques, the last with more than a little irony. The film was radically shortened by its Italian television broadcaster, RAI, because it showed too much poverty. When it was shown on Italian TV, it appeared with the caption "fragments of a film by Joris Ivens." A TOPICS A Bird's Eye View of a Documentary Career HELEN VAN DONGEN Kees Bakker beforenext COPYRIGHT:Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival Organizing Committee