Political ecologies of food through film:‘agropoetic’ cinematic style in Ermanno Olmi’s Terra Madre

ABSTRACT

Drawing from overlapping interests in visual culture and food studies, this essay documents political ecologies of food through film focusing on eco-food documentary Terra Madre. The role of film as powerful tool to document and intervene in the ongoing ecological crisis of the food system has been widely recognized. The link between cinema, poetic expression, and ecology is particularly evident in Terra Madre, where the human-environment interactions are evoked through the use of what I call an ‘agropoetic’ cinematic style, an affective space for excavating cultures and traditions that value the soil where farmers share their own narratives of agroecological empowerment. Through a close textual reading of the documentary, the essay interrogates the relationships among food, nature, and society to expose the dynamics that reproduce practices of agroextractivism and injustice within the food system. This approach acknowledges the political embeddedness of environmental issues viewed as rooted in systems of power and political control over marginal and colonized groups. The film’s narrative is analyzed within larger visual, discursive, and ecological contexts in order to begin sketching new visual political ecologies of food in Italy.

KEYWORDS:

• Eco-food cinema
• political ecologies of food
• agropoetic cinematic style
• visual political ecologies of food

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Film References

Casalis, P., and S. Scarafia. Gente di Terra Madre. 2009; Italy.

Cirasola, N. Focaccia Blues. 2009; Italy.

Olmi, E. The Tree of the Wooden Clogs. 1978; Italy.

Olmi, E. Terra Madre. 2009; Italy.

Olmi, E. Rupi del vino. 2010; Italy.

Olmi, E. Il pianeta che ci ospita. 2015; Italy.

Piavoli, F. L’orto di Flora. 2009; Italy.

Rohrwacher, A. Lazzaro felice. 2018; Italy.

Sardo, S. Slow Food Story. 2013; Italy.

Zaccaro, M. L’India di Vandana Shiva. 2009; Italy.

Notes

1. Terra Madre premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2009 and was released in Italian theaters later on May 8.

2. This essay will not be delving into the Slow Food movement. I discuss the Slow Food movement and its contradictions and limitations in a chapter of my forthcoming book. The story of the Slow Food movement is documented in Stefano Sardo’s 2013 film Slow Food Story.

3. Terra Madre is part of the syllabus of a course on the ecological representation of Italian food through film that I have been offering for the past decade at the University of South Florida. I shared initial drafts of this essay in conjunction with three presentations. The first was at the conference of the American Association for Italian Studies at the College of Charleston in 2012, where I delivered ‘Focaccia Blues: Local Food and Global Cinema.’ Focaccia Blues is Nico Cirasola’s 2009 documentary and a part of my course. The second presentation was at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan, in 2016, where I was invited to present ‘Slow Food Versus Fast Food: Food, Culture, Sustainability.’ The third presentation was at Florida Atlantic University in February 2020, where I was invited to present ‘Environment and Civic Engagement in Ermanno Olmi’s Eco-Food Documentary Terra Madre.’

4. The 2008 Terra Madre meeting is documented in the short film Gente di Terra Madre (2009) directed by Stefano Scarafia and Paolo Casalis. The short is enclosed as a DVD to the volume Terra Madre: Come non farci mangiare dal cibo and is distinct from Ermanno Olmi’s 2009 documentary Terra Madre to which I will be referring in this essay.

5. The film, which is considered Ermanno Olmi’s masterpiece, was screened during the pandemic on the national television channel Rai 3 on 10 April 2020. The broadcasting took place on Good Friday as an homage to the city of Bergamo, Italy’s coronavirus epicenter. The film, which is almost entirely in Bergamasco dialect, reached almost 1.4 million viewers. This was an extraordinary number, considering that the other national channel, Rai 1, was broadcasting the Via Crucis with the Pope, which reached almost 8 million viewers (Corriere della Sera 2020).

6. I was one of the promoters of the Milan Protocol: https://www.barillacfn.com/en/dissemination/milan_protocol/patrizia-la-trecchia/

7. My English translation of the original Italian: ‘E io, naturalmente, ero fra coloro del nostro tempo che non conoscevano la solidale unione di intenti testimoniati in questo raduno mondiale fra tutte le Genti contadine. Uomini e donne che nelle loro terra ancora resistono all’incalzare di una delittuosa politica di sfruttamento esasperato e devastante dei suoli fertili, unica risorsa per il cibo di tutti i popoli. Una testimonianza eroica di eterna e leale alleanza con la natura e i suoi frutti. Un’alleanza che non ha barriere di lingue, divisioni di ideologie e religioni, né confini di Stati. Al Forum di Terra Madre ho riconosciuto i contadini come li ricordavo nelle nostre campagne, al tempo della mia infanzia. I volti dei contadini si somigliano in ogni angolo del mondo. Sono volti su cui si riconoscono le medesime tracce di vita, così come le fisionomie dei paesaggi con i campi arati, le colture, i pascoli. Oggi quel mondo dei contadini è assediato dalle grandi imprese il cui scopo è nel profitto. Anche il contadino vuole guadagnare, ma il suo attaccamento alla terra è anche un atto d’amore ed è in questo sentimento solidale che si genera il rispetto della Natura. Sono sicuro che questi onesti cittadini non tradiranno mai la loro Terra. E noi cittadini metropolitani, che viviamo inscatolati nelle nostre città, senza più i colori e i profumi delle stagioni forse, in un giorno molto prossimo, se ci capiterà di passare accanto a un orto dove un nonno e una piccola bimba colgono i frutti maturi, allora potremo ancora riconoscere la vera casa dell’uomo.’

8. My TED talk on food waste is available at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enblsQloxvE.

9. My English translation of the original Italian: ‘Siccome stiamo parlando di un poeta del cinema, il risultato non poteva certo essere una semplice documentazione dell’evento del 2006: volevamo entrambi un documentario ma Olmi ha esplorato, accorpato altre immagini, altre storie come quella del contadino solitario Ernesto o dell’orto di Flora che chiude il film.’

10. While I do not use the terms peasants and farmers interchangeably, I attempt to remove the anti-peasant bias from the word peasant. The traditional understanding of the term peasant refers to land laborers who work as tenants, as it was the case during the feudal order. The Italian word for peasant, contadino, refers to ‘a worker in the property of a count.’ In fact, the word contado refers to the feudo di un conte, the feudal property of a count. The contadini were those who lived and worked in the contado. They did not own property and were treated as inferior members of society. My aim here is to emphasize the local agricultural knowledge peasants possess as a valuable asset in the agroecological transition.

11. The footage and film clips of nature are taken from various feature films and from the series of scientific television programs SuperQuark (Terra Madre Pressbook 2009, 8). The series started in 1981 as Quark, modeling David Attenborough’s BBC natural history documentaries. It is broadcasted on national Rai television. It was renamed SuperQuark in 1995.

12. The four children are Stefano Gatti, Nicholas Paganessi, Greta Scala, and Federica Sordo. The school garden is located in the schoolyard of public elementary school Pia Albini Crespi in the town of Fiorano al Serio in the province of Bergamo (Terra Madre Pressbook 2009, 3).

13. The English translation is adapted from the following Italian verses in the documentary: ‘Mi ricordo sotto le torri della rocca dove il fiume bagna bionde coltivazioni, io vidi un vecchio che aveva pochi iugeri di campo abbandonato. Costui nonostante tutto piantando rade file di erbaggi e all’intorno bianchi gigli e verbene e gracile papavero pareggiava col suo spirito le ricchezze dei re. Era il primo a cogliere la rosa a primavera e in autunno la frutta e tornando a casa a tarda notte ricopriva il suo desco di cibi prelibati.’

14. The film crew was not allowed to participate to the ceremony. The footage for this section was provided by the Global Group Diversity Trust (Terra Madre Pressbook 2009, 14).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patrizia La Trecchia

Patrizia La Trecchia is Associate Professor at the University of South Florida, where she directs the Italian Program and is Associated Faculty at the Patel College of Global Sustainability. Her research interests include cultural studies, film, food studies, and environmental humanities. She was Visiting Scholar at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2014. She served as member of the Habitat Partner University Initiative Hub on Food Security and as supporter of the Milan Protocol. She was selected to deliver a TED talk on food waste in 2013.