After completing his film My Voyage in Italy, Martin Scorsese was given an unexpected gift of several documentaries by De Seta. Each was about ten minutes long, in color, most shot in stunning CinemaScope. Scorsese had heard of De Seta “the way one hears of a legendary place: someone must have seen it at some point but no one remembered who, or when, or where.” The short films were graced with concise but poetic titles like Islands of Fire, Easter in Sicily, and Peasants of the Sea, and they depicted with gravity traditional culture as it still persisted along the rocky barrens and roiled shores of postwar Sicily. De Seta's artful works distinguished themselves from contemporary ethnography by privileging the voice of his much-admired subjects, letting their words and their labors tell their stories. He focused on the details of longstanding craft, on the sanctity of communal rites, and on the fragile but revered place of man in nature. Again Scorsese: “I was sharing his curiosity and his amazement and I was sadly realizing, as he must have, that the vitality of an unspoiled culture was being filmed for the very last time.”

Islands of Fire (Isole di fuoco) (1955, 11 mins). Sulphur Mines (Surfarara) (1955, 10 mins). Easter in Sicily (Pasqua in Sicilia) (1955, 11 mins). Peasants of the Sea (Contadini del mare) (1955, 10 mins). Golden Parable (Parabola d'oro) (1955, 10 mins). Fishing (Pescherecci) (1958, 10 mins).

• (Color, 'Scope, 35mm, In Italian with English subtitles, From Cineteca di Bologna)

Followed by:
Détour De Seta
Salvo Cuccia (Italy, 2004)

This poetically rendered portrait of Vittorio De Seta focuses on postwar Italy, when the local and archaic cultures of the south were being eroded. Clips from many of De Seta's films, along with the comments of writers, critics, and filmmakers, make clear his overlooked contribution to Italian cinema. De Seta's long-abiding interest in the “forgotten classes” is brought home with excerpts from his newest work, Lettere dal Sahara, a documentary about a Senegalese migrant who, after crossing the whole of Italy, decides to go back to Africa.

• Written by Cuccia, Benni Atria. Photographed by Vincenzo Marinese. (57 mins, In Italian with English subtitles, Color, DVD, From the filmmaker, permission Filmoteca Regionale Siciliana)