documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...
about a small hilltown in Italy that practices a unique form of theatre called "autodrama". It is the second feature of '' Marwencol'' filmmakers Jeff Malmberg and Chris Shellen. The title is an Italian word meaning "performance, spectacle, or play" and in Italian is pronounced ("spet-TAH-kō-lō").
Synopsis
Monticchiello
Monticchiello is a village in Tuscany, central Italy, administratively a frazione of the comune of Pienza, province of Siena. At the time of the 2001 census its population was 213.
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
between 2012 and 2016, using a Sony EX-1 camera and a portable Zoom audio recorder. The crew of Malmberg and Shellen lived in Monticchiello for six months in 2012 to make the film. They involved the town in their editorial process, showing several rough cuts of the film to the townspeople for feedback.
Reception
The film was released on September 6, 2017, at the
Quad Cinema
The Quad Cinema is New York City's first small four-screen multiplex theater. Located at 34 West 13th Street in Greenwich Village, it was opened by entrepreneur Maurice Kanbar, along with his younger brother Elliott S. Kanbar in October 1972. I ...
in New York City before moving on to other cities. The three-week run at the Quad included a short film before the feature by Jeff Malmberg and Chris Shellen, ''Amleto'', focusing on the daily life of one of Monticchiello's cats. The film has a 93% approval rating on review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, based on 27 reviews. In December 2022, the film was selected for the Criterion Channel.