Luisa's Notebooks (from 'I Diari della Sacher')
58° VENICE BIENNALE
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Directed by Isabella Sandri / creative documentary / prod. Sacher Film, in collaboration with Tele+ and RAI TRE / 27 min. / DV-Cam, Beta SP / 2001 / Italy
Il Film
The creative documentary ‘Luisa's Notebooks’, is a part of the series ‘I Diari della Sacher’, produced by Nanni Moretti, inspired by true stories from the National Diary Archive at Pieve Santo Stefano. Invited to the Venice Biennale, it is based on the story of a housewife who, in order not to go mad, commits her pain to four notebooks, but, above all, it is the story of her slow but lucid and life-affirming liberation from a marriage that was suffocating her freedom. This work is dedicated to the mothers who didn’t run away from home. To those who sacrificed themselves for their children and put up with everything (violence, pain, loneliness and depression) in order not to abandon their children to a ‘father who wasn’t a father’. A useless sacrifice, which ruined 25 years of a woman’s life and a good part of the children existence. In search of explanations and answers to all this ‘blackness’, there is just her face, like a luminous word.
Synopsis
Luisa T. gets married at 18, gives birth to two children and gets on with her domestic and rural chores. At the age of 35 she decides to write a diary. From that moment her notebooks become the only interlocutor for an increasingly lonely and desperate Luisa, who initially merely describes the repetitive boredom of her housewife days with a husband-master she doesn’t love, and then gradually she begins to entrust this mute and patient friend – who puts up with all her errors and ignorance – the narration of her first acts of rebellion and her pain which otherwise no-one would listen to.
Credits
Production Manager Fabrizio Amato
Sound Gianluca Costamagna
Photography and Cameraman Isabella Sandri
Editing Rosella Mocci
Music Epsilon Indi
Produced by Angelo Barbagallo and Nanni Moretti for Sacher Film, in collaboration with Rai Tre and Tele+
Cast
Luisa Trasolini
Eleonora Verrelli