"Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, Milanese filmmakers who last toured the United States in 1981 with a program of their 'scented films,' have returned to America with their newest and most ambitious film, Dal Polo all'Equatore. Three years in the making, Dal Polo all'Equatore continues Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi's exploration of the early years of cinema. Working as archivists and 'film archeologists,' they have recast film material into 'possible assemblages and montages' that were never planned by the original producers. Their newest film uses rare footage from the turn of the century that they reprinted and hand-tinted to reinterpret the foundations of film representation. Working with highly unstable 35mm nitrate originals, Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi built special printing machines that allowed them to restore and re-examine these priceless early images, and in doing so they also re-examine the historical development of the documentary cinema. "Dal Polo all'Equatore takes as its starting point films shot by Luca Comerio, one of Italy's earliest cinematographers-he was already active by 1905. His first recorded film was footage of the Giro d'Italia bicycle race and, shortly after, a spectacular series of sequences entitled Earthquake in Sicily. Comerio's film Dal Polo all'Equatore consisted of an elaborate montage of primitive films shot, on the whole, around 1910. The remains of this film, along with other fragments of documentary and fiction films from around the same period, have been used to create a new artistic vision that entirely reflects Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi's modern sensibilities while remaining true to the exotic and voluptuous original material." David Gerstein, San Francisco Cinematheque