Sabaudia

(Lotte Schreiber, Austria, 2018)

Sabaudia in Italy has an unusual history. Created by Mussolini’s architects as a model “new fascist city” of the 1930s, it was supplied with extensive farmlands converted from marshes.

Yet, despite its undeniably “brutal” architecture, creators including Alberto Moravia and Pier Paolo Pasolini subsequently found Sabaudia to be a wonderful, hospitable place – the sign of a genuine, traditional Italy, and its resistance to all modern ideologies.

Lotte Schreiber constructs a multi-faceted, documentary view of Sabaudia – inspired by, but going beyond, Pasolini.

She portrays this site as a paradoxical mixture of social class separation, nostalgia, and everyday whimsy.

© Adrian Martin September 2018