Italy’s industrial miracles of the twentieth century are explored in Davide Ferrario’s insightful documentary that combines an impressive range of 100 years of archival footage with literary texts to thoughtprovoking effect. Material shot by famous Italian directors such as Ermanno Olmi and Dino Risi, is merged with the work of poets and writers such as Dino Buzzati, Italo Calvino, and the assassinated Pier Paolo Pasolini, to create an astounding metaphor about the utopia of industrial and technological progress as the solution to humanity’s problems.
The title of the film is an expression used by Dino Buzzati in a 1964 documentary to describe the production of steel in the furnaces of Taranto, or more specifically, the mass that is created by steel melting. As centuries-old olive groves fell under the weight of machines and enormous factories, this was a time when the utopia of progress was accepted by all living in the illusion of prosperity and a “better future”.
*NOT SCREENING IN HOBART OR BYRON