Having experimented with different ways of being in the world with a camera, De Seta strove for something new, a “fiction” film that was not scripted but was built up day by day. His setting is an actual classroom in a suburb of Rome, filled with students classified as unruly and disaffected. Their young teacher from Naples, played by Bruno Cirino, wants to redeem his wards and sets about divining their alienation. Naturally, his initiatives, deemed too personal and unconventional, create their own sort of alienation among the school's administrators. This faux-fiction thrives in a “mongrel context of half-acting,” as De Seta described it, giving us a rare reality show when “reality” wasn't quite yet a genre. But De Seta anticipates even this, scripting the world exterior to the classroom, for example the teachers and parents, then melding it seamlessly with the “authentic” students. Diary of a Schoolmaster is a classic lesson about degrees of separation.

• Written by De Seta, based on the book Un anno a Pietralata by Albino Bernardini. Photographed by Luciano Tovoli. With Bruno Cirino and students at Istituto Statale d'Arte Sacra al Tiburtino III. (c. 70 mins, In Italian with English subtitles, Color, Beta SP, From RAI)

Preceded by short:
The Swordfish Season (Lu tempu di li pisci spata) (Italy, 1954). De Seta's first short film captures small fishing boats in the Strait of Messina and the Aeolian Islands and eschews the usual worn-out folklore. (11 mins, Color, 35mm, From Cineteca di Bologna)