Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub | 1979 | France, Italy | 104’ | digital

From the Cloud to the Resistance (Dalla nube alla resistenza) is a two-part film about time, myth and resistance based on two works by Italian writer Cesare Pavese. The first part features six conversations from Pavese’s 1947 Dialogues with Leucò, which is composed of imagined dialogues between ancient Greek figures. The dialogues take place in the Piedmontese landscape and concern the relationship between God and humans, the nature of sacrifice and the abuse of power. The second part of the film is set in the present and based on Pavese’s The Moon and the Bonfires (1950), in which an emigrant returns to his native village after the Second World War in search of traces of the life he once knew, only to be confronted by loss, violence, and stories of resistance.

This screening is part of the In Focus: Renate Sami retrospective at the Goethe-Institut (9-12 Sept)

With an introduction by Ricardo Matos Cabo

Ricardo Matos Cabo is an independent film programmer. Recent projects include retrospectives of the work of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub (London, 2019), Tsuchimoto Noriaki (Courtisane. Ghent, 2019), Ogawa Shinsuke and Ogawa Pro (Cinéma du réel, Galerie du Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2018), several co-curated programmes for The Essay film festival in London (Esfir Shub, Babette Mangolte, Kidlat Tahimik, Mani Kaul, Günter Peter Straschek), and contributions to the documentary strand of the London Korean Film Festival. He has edited a monograph on the films of Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa (“Cem Mil Cigarros”, 2009).