The mountains are a wonderful world. A first and rapid reading of this statement involves the launch in our mind of a carousel of images, collected through our eyes or through other people’s shots, which tell of peaks that touch the sky, of varied environments and of connections between places and cultures.
We are instinctively led to think of the mountain as a realm of the visible. Yet, if you think about it, there is a dimension of free high altitude that goes beyond the sense of sight. A mountain that can be heard, touched and perceived despite the darkness. The mountain is a wonderful world, capable of giving emotions through all our senses. This week’s appointment with our cinematographic column invites you to feel the mountain with your eyes closed.
Through three intense and profoundly different films, we immerse ourselves in a sensorial experience that begins in the Brenta Dolomites, with Blindfolded. It is the story of a walk in the void, done blindfolded on a 430 meter long ribbon. A challenge in which balance is no longer a question of sight, but of pure internal connection with the environment.
Caveman – The hidden giant instead it leads us into the dark belly of the earth, into the darkness of the Apuan Alps, where marble becomes material to be shaped through the hands of an artist who has chosen the silence of the abyss to create a work of art invisible to man. For 30 years the sculptor Filippo Dobrilla has chosen to descend to a depth of 650 meters, to give light, where the sun does not reach, to a sleeping rock giant. An artistic product born in the dark, in an environment far from the eyes of humanity and its conditioning.
The journey ends with Shared Vision among the rocky pinnacles of Scotland, rock formations that rise from the icy and rough waters of the Atlantic. A film that tells the journey beyond the visible of Red Széll, a blind athlete who, far from considering blindness as a limit, engages in an adventure that combines sea and mountains, including mountain biking, swimming and climbing.
Three stories of men who found in the deprivation of sight, or in the isolation of darkness, one deeper freedom.
BLINDFOLDED
by Caterina Cozzio
Late autumn. The young Carlo, helped by his friends, wants to achieve his feat: walk blindfolded for 430 meters suspended above the void on a highline, a ribbon anchored between two mountains, in one of the most scenic places in the Brenta Dolomites. What drives him to attempt this feat?
CAVEMAN – THE HIDDEN GIANT
by Tommaso Landucci
In a cave in the Apuan Alps, 650 meters underground, there is the deepest work of art in the world. It is a marble colossus, a sleeping naked giant on which the sculptor Filippo Dobrilla continued to work for more than 30 years in absolute solitude in the darkness of the cave. But what drives an artist to descend into one of the deepest abysses in Europe to create his most ambitious, but inaccessible to the eyes of men, work? This is the question to which CAVEMAN seeks an answer, moving between Filippo’s youthful passions, his desire for isolation, his idea of pure, uncompromising art. For Filippo, immersing himself in the darkness of the cave means taking refuge in a place where he can feel free, distant from the prejudices and conditioning of society.
SHARED VISION
on Keith Partridge
Red Széll has always had an adventurous nature. After conquering the iconic Old Man of Hoy and Old Man of Stoer, only the Am Buachaille remains to complete the trilogy of Scotland’s maritime pinnacles. Reaching the start of the climb requires a sort of triathlon: mountain biking, climbing along cliffs and a swim in the middle of the sea. Then he has only four hours to get to the top and down, before the ocean breaks loose. Red is blind, his story is a journey that goes beyond the visible.
