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Lamerica

Stefano Galli Director

  • Added 9 years ago to SNEAK PREVIEWS

    Lamerica, a visual narrative, takes the viewer on a lyrical journey across the states, through 16mm frames evocative of postcards from the road. Italian director Stefano Galli photographs the country as it unfolds before his incisive, wry outsiders eye.

    Presented in a series of mostly static, lengthy tableau shots--vignettes from small town middle America--the film presents an iconic, richly colorful picture of the USA.

    With one traveling shot (from the bed of a pick-up truck, stars and stripes fluttering in and out of frame) and one panning shot (across a desolate cornfield landscape) the tableau structure is violated on just these two occasions, bursts of camera movement that draw attention to the formal rigorousness of the film.

    The composition within the frame presents chromatic, dynamic perspectives; varying from ultra close to super wide, includes stunning landscapes, lonely highways and 3 motel shots; at the beginning, middle, and end; bookending the journey in classic, lonesome roadside motels. The characters who populate the film are real people, many of whom address the camera directly, and stage personal, rough-hewn performances for the spectator.

    The film roams from state to state - Texas to Montana - California to Minnesota - Ohio to Florida.

    Jump cuts without candid geographical or narrative continuity highlight the pure audio-visual encounters, landscapes and details often shifting our perspective through the surprising juxtaposition of places, faces and landscapes.

    Galli's world is a masculine world; we meet only three women in the film and they appear shy and awkward when contrasted with the exuberant Wyoming gun-lover, grouchy Key West retiree, tragic Navajo Native Americans and their soulful song, and rugged Texas Cowboy who speaks volumes with his silence.

    Meticulous, dynamic frame compositions engage the viewer with the picture postcard image in this off-beat documentary; while the musical theme, played by a cheerful Tennessee guitar picker in a gloomy swampy cemetery, links the disparate times and places of the film.

    In the final scene we see a tongue-in-cheek shot of a seemingly never-ending train crossing a quintessentially American plain, into the long and lonely distance.

    Lamerica is sadness, humor, luminosity in an America distilled to the moonshine.