A Steady Job (Il Posto) - Cinecitta Italia Docs

New documentary highlighting the plight of full time employment in Southern Italy, screening as part of  Cinecittà Italian Docs

A Steady Job (Il Posto) focuses on graduate nurses and healthcare workers in Italy who compete for just a few vacancies in their desperate search for job stability. Filmed largely before, but ultimately impacted by, the coronavirus pandemic, it provides a disturbing overview of the labour market in Italy – a portrait of a tragically broken system.

 

Filmed in the hand-held form focusing on those trying to find work for these graduates, travelling to job fairs on long journeys, the documentary has this unfortunate air of resignation about the downfall of government to give jobs in a vital industry.

As the film notes in the beginning, one in two adults in Southern Italy are unemployed and so they travel on coaches to these job markets in the hope of gaining employment abandoning family with dreams still in their hearts.

A telling scene is when the man who arranges the trips for these hopeful souls is driving home with his business partner and he stops saying is it worth it for him to do this anymore in this recrutiment industry - the weight of the world and the burden he feels weighs heavy upon his shoulders. This moment is shot as an excised scene from Michael Mann's The Insider.

The ending of the film which poses more questions than supplying answers for those seeking employment, shows the individuals walking zombie-like with a melancholic ethereal electronic score underneath - this is a generation of souls lost without a direction in this world.

Filmed largely before but ultimately more impacted by the global pandemic, this overview of the Italian health system is both sombre and tragic. This film grips the audience and becomes an alternative road movie of sorts.

A Steady Job (Il Posto) will have its UK Premier and screen as part of the Cinecitta Italian Docs season at London's Bertha DocHouse on Saturday 24th June with a Q&A with directors Mattia Colombo and Gianluca Mattarese

Our Nixon

Richard Nixon is quite possibly one of the most polarising American president - not as beloved as Lincoln or Roosevelt, yet just as controversial as Bush Jnr.  Nixon's name is forever synonymous with the Watergate scandal when advisors tapped into phone lines during the Democratic Convention and brought down the Presidency.  One that he worked so hard for after so many knockbacks.

Tellingly, though Nixon lived in a world before current social media and the immediate culture where judgments are made instantly.  Nixon was in power when we still believed our leaders to be sacred, true and honourable.  To think Nixon and his advisors were as crooked as others was astonishing, and for a President to resign was as shocking as when Edward VIII abdicated the throne in the 1930s.

Young director, Penny Lane, has garnered video tape/home video footage of three advisors - H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Dwight Chapin - were all convicted and served prison time for their efforts during the scandal.  Something that their leader was never afforded the chance to commit to.  

The footage used is quite an intriguing mixture of behind-the-scenes footage and contemporary interview footage of the three advisors.  Their loyalty to their subject is unwavering, even though they were in effect stool pigeons for the administration.

Some nice moments are the shots and views from Air Force One and Nixon pacing the Oval office, yet a lot of the footage is still the sort you watch in bad home videos - vain, self-glorious, egotistical fare that should be saved for the privacy of those who shot it.  The footage stayed locked up in a Government vault for many years along with White House tapes - and for all its blandness, there are some moments that elaborate on Nixon's overwhelming paranoia and rampant idealism for a perfect America that was slowly changing.

Our Nixon screens as part of the Open City Docs Fest (20th-23rd June) on Friday 21 June at Curzon Soho 6.30pm followed by a panel discussion including Paul Mitchell (director Watergate (1994)) and Saturday 22 June 6.30pm at Birkbeck Cinema.

www.opencitydocsfest.com for listings and ticket information

Twitter: @OpenCityDocs

El Alma de las Moscas

Or The Soul of Flies to give El Alma de las Moscas its English title, is a film written and directed by Jonathan Cenzual Burley and centres on the journey by two brothers who have never met before, who must journey together to the funeral of a father they never knew.

The brothers meet at a train station, where to their surprise the train has not gone by in years.  It is the beginning of a journey through barren landscapes punctuated by chance encounters with offbeat and weird characters that inhabit these wastelands.

Eventually, the brothers learn more about themselves and each other through these interactions with these odd ball people.

That is the general gist of the film, and the film does have the appeal of magical realism that typically Latin generic eccentricity and yet the production is a victim of its techncial accomplishments.  Shot on high definition with just one camera, a microphone and a tripod with a production crew of 7 who muscled all together - the film is imprisoned by these technical restraints.

The actors seem to wander aimlessly throughout in a state of purgatory; some harsh critics have said the film is banal - such a word makes the film seem unwatchable.  The only problem for a film that is Spanish is that it is not thrilling or have any Latin exhilaration coursing through its veins.  Even the beauty of the La Armuna in Salamanca is not used to great effect; with no great photography utilised you get a sense that this is anywhere in Spain not identifying as a region would have been of benefit.

Recently, I have watched American independent films revolve around the same discourse of troubled brothers working together for a common goal.  This film has the right idea, perhaps the message has just been lost in translation which is unfortunate considering the initial one is a good, waiting to be let loose on a larger scale model.

El Alma de Las Moscas is out on limited release on Friday 13th July