Workers, Peasants

A roster of nonprofessional actors, mainly ordinary workers and farmers from Tuscany’s Pisa province, bring to life a famed Marxist novella (Women of Messina) in Straub-Huillet’s stunning treatise on community and opposition. In the midst of a verdant Italian forest, as the wind lifts the tree leaves and water flows in the nearby brook, these contemporary Italians recite the struggles of a group of peasants and workers during World War II. What Italo Calvino referred to as a “choral narrative” of utopia and unity emerges, one drawn from the past, yet echoing still today.