Distinguished Italian documentarian Gianfranco Rosi specializes in kaleidoscopic portraits of people living amid anxiety and uncertainty. His latest, Pompei: Below the Clouds, which caps a a conceptual trilogy about the intersection of everyday life and spiritual life in Italy, is among his most striking and monumental works. Shot in beautiful black and white, the film details with pointillist precision and unnerving beauty a region in Naples living under the shadow of Mount Vesuvius and above the simmering Campi Flegrei volcanic caldera, which has in recent years experienced increasingly frequent and alarming tremors. In this volatile environment, Rosi finds archeologists reckoning with both uncovered ancient artifacts and the wreckage of tomb raiders, squads of diggers descending into long abandoned tunnels, emergency centers already at breaking points, and a populace experiencing a generalized daily disquietude, fearful of an eruption like the one that buried Pompeii in 79 A.D.
There is a second screening at 7PM.
