Home > Dreams in the wind - Trento Film Festival 2011.
On May 3rd 2011 at 11.00 am, in the Exhibit space MontagnaLibri - Piazza Fiera of the Trento Film Festival 2011, will be presented the book La stella del cardo e il covone di fieno, Giuseppe Det Alippi, (The star of the thistle and the hay sheaf), a painted and told (in an interview) biography about Giuseppe "Det" Alippi alpinist-peasant of Pian dei Resinelli (Lecco). A mix of interviews, paintings, reminds and notes from the Grigna to Patagonia with photos and portraits. Foreword by Reihnold Messner.
This book will be printed in late 2011 by Montura Editing.
Carlo Caccia converses with Luisa, the author.
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Carlo Caccia with Luisa Rota Sperti
Writer Roberto Mantovani and Climber Kurt Dienberger
Artist and writer Mauro Corona
Photo by Daniele Lira
Photo by Daniele Lira
DREAMS IN THE WIND
Luisa Rota Sperti’s scarecrows
They live between the olive trees and know the local winds, Breva and Tivano, in their perpetual swing. Thus Lario – Lake Como’s ancient name, possibly standing for Lawar, a path carved into the rock – ripples, and the Genius loci awakens. Here he is, the guardian spirit: first he peeks at the lake, then at the mountains above its shores, with mighty Sasso Cavallo, and finally halts, half way up, gazing at the hill of those who dance to the wind. What cute fellows, he thinks to himself; “scarecrows” is the word he hears everybody address them with, as if they should be afraid, whereas towards them he has nothing but tender feelings.
One day he’d seen them arrive, carried by little Luisa who called them by their names. Amazed at himself, because he wasn’t quick-witted as usual, it took him a while to realize that they were the work of her hands. Of Luisa’s hands that knew how to take care of a vegetable garden, but became truly magic once they moved a pencil on a sheet of white paper. So there’s more to it, thought the Genius loci: not only infinite variations of minute details on paper that almost strive to dissect the essence of things, depriving them of any sort of corollary before they turn iron grey, which is probably the colour of all ideas; there were larger shapes as well, three-dimensional ones which had to be outlined, in exciting contrast with the absolute precision of those drawings where nothing was left to chance.
Being accustomed to the extremely dense counterpoint of pencils, to the rigorous polyphony of lines whose wondrous intersections and distinct features could only be fully appreciated by an attentive eye, at a couple of inches’ distance, the Genius loci had been caught offguard, struck hard by the rustic chant of peasants: a catchy affair characterized by exuberant colours which stood out also from afar, even from the nearby hill. Luisa had disrupted him: of all people it was she, the very person who wouldn’t ever stop her search on the paper’s surface, that seemed to have given in to the temptation of the most popular of chats, to that descending path of certain artists who do not feel the suffocating but insuppressible urge to prove to themselves the value of their own works.
Scarecrows, a pair of crossed branches, a piece of wire and whatever happened to be at hand. Partly disappointed and partly curious, the Genius loci had wanted to get closer, and once he was able to see better, he understood that there was something more to those creatures each of which had its own way of telling its personal story. The sheet of an umbrella, a basket, a shirt and a hat: from up close it was possible to recognize them, to remember where they came from and whom they had belonged to. Well, Luisa had not betrayed him, she had not freed herself from her obsession for symbols, and he who had detected the link he was unconsciously looking for, was now happy.
While observing these swaying scarecrows (that were looking one at the other) he had begun to consider them with a feeling of benevolence and one day, while he was moving up the Meria valley to visit the Sasso Cavallo, he’d sat down and dozed off at the entrance of a cave called Ram, to find himself dreaming of men gone mad, of animals in flight and hundreds of little birds that, trembling of fear, found shelter within the friendly folds of Luisa’s scarecrows.
Carlo Caccia
Sass Cavall - Giuseppe "Det" Alippi between history and legend:
