Michelangelo Frammartino's back -- at Tribeca and MoMA/PS1 -- with ALBERI

Is the equally gifted and unusual Michelangelo Frammartino -- shown at right and further below, of Le Quattro Volte and the just-opened film-cum-art-installation ALBERI -- more of a fine artist than a filmmaker? Why can't these be one in the same? They can, of course (Signore Frammartino is perhaps the best example I could offer), but they usually are not. Most filmmakers are more focused on telling a story and entertaining their audiences, which is pretty much the whole point when tickets are purchased and profit is demanded. This artist's work, while very beautiful and reasonably accessible to intelligent viewers, is less concerned with narrative than with immersion.

Meeting Michelangelo Frammartino proves one of the singular treats of TrustMovies' cinematic life, not only because of the richness and beauty of Le Quattro Volte, and now this new "cinematic installation," Alberi, but because the man himself seems as beautiful inside and out as are his films. So fully alive and filled with wonder and pleasure does he sound and appear that he is at once propulsive and contagious -- in the best of ways -- as he speaks about his latest work.

The first thing Frammartino does as he sees me coming toward him (thanks to my rather large height) is to tell me that I should have played one of his man/tree characters (above, center) in Alberi, which translates into English as "trees." Frammartino himself is on the small side, but so full of energy is he that he seems about twice my size. Alberi is his 28-minute ode to nature, ceremony and tradition, in which his camera (and we) wake to a morning in the midst of a forest in the hills of Southern Italy (locations were Armento, Potenza and Basilicata), then slowly come to life, moving around, over and into a mountain village not unlike the one used for Le Quattro Volte, which was filmed in Calabria. (The village used here seems larger, or maybe more compact, than that in LQV.)

The wind blows, bells toll, and a group of men leave for that nearby forest, carrying with them some small hand tools. Once in the forest, they begin stripping trees of their ivy growth and small branches, and before we know it, suddenly -- well, this is for you to see and gasp at. The film ends with a kind of traditional ceremony that eventually brings us back to that initial image -- but now in a very different manner.

The beauty here is just about staggering, but Frammartino doesn't dwell on it via any usual gorgeous-and-clichéd cinematography, as much as he buries you, wraps you inside it. This forest is immersive, and the installation -- inside the Dome at PS1 in Long Island City, Queens -- allows you to sit or lie on the floor (with cushions provided) and get utterly lost in it. For me the dome's screen, coupled with what and how Frammartino films, while not as large as that of IMAX, proves much more immersive.

There is no dialog in the film, just image and sound. And beauty. That's more than enough. While some of the images may put you in mind of the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul or The Wicker Man, this is uniquely Frammartino. Oh, yes -- one more thing: These films are not documentaries, they are narratives, although they use the documentary style and are based very closely on real life, tradition and ceremony, as they are found in these villages. But the artist has tweaked them all to serve his goal.  Alberi plays now through April 27, via the Tribeca Film Festival and MoMA's PS1.

After I have left the Dome (and watched the film one-and-one half times), I ask Frammartino some questions to learn more about him and his movies. The filmmaker is 45 years old, though he looks, I tell him, a decade younger. "Maybe my work keeps me young!" (His English is surprisingly good, though we have a translator on hand for the occasional missing word.)

While his work may keep the fellow youthful, it does take a good deal of time to produce.  Frammartino spent five years making the 88-minute Le Quattro Volte and a full year making this new (and not even a half-hour-long) film. "I don't work so quickly, it is true." By comparing the country of Italy to a shoe and then using his own foot as an example, the artist points out the areas of Italy, both of which lie in the south, where his films were shot.

Frammartino then tells me how very easy it was to cast the man who played his shepherd in LQV, but how very difficult it was to cast the famous "tree" that must be cut down to enable the ceremony in that same film. "Humans are easy," he smiles, "but nature is difficult." The artist loves nature and wants, via his work, to show us how it connects to us and we to it -- often in ways that we don't expect or even realize on a conscious level as we watch the films. He then explains a theory in LQV that practically defines reincarnation. "But you don't have to believe in that" He assures me. "I myself do not."

Still, there is something primal, maybe pantheistic, in the work of this man, and in his personality, too. You cannot watch his films or spend even a little time with him without being, in a sense, conver-ted. But Frammartino is not proselytizing; he's just being himself.

Take what you can, or will, from Signore Frammartino's spare LE QUATTRO VOLTE

Another in the growing catalog of films that, intention-ally or not, blur the line between documentary and narrative,   LE QUATTRO VOLTE (The Four Times -- which does sound a bit classier in Italian, right?) looks, feels and acts just like a documentary but is a narrative film, with a cast made up of the actual people who live in the actual mountain town -- a rough gem of isolated, near-timeless beauty -- where it was filmed.  It shows us things we never have seen (and probably never will) in a manner which -- even if we have seen them -- will likely seem unique.

TrustMovies does not read any press material handed out at screenings or with DVD screeners until he has first seen the film at hand.  He makes his critical judgments based on whatever he can garner from what's he's seen, rather than from what he will later read that the filmmaker (in this case, writer/
director Michelangelo Frammartino, shown at right) and his distributor (Lorber Films) might want him to know. This may be unfair to the movie people, but it is fairer, I think, to my readers, who will be plopping their tushies down into $10 to $12 dollar seats without benefit of this "additional information." Regarding Le Quattro Volte, I don't think I've ever read a press kit, post-screening, more filled with surprise information about what I had just seen. Perusing it, I found myself murmuring time and again, "So that's what that scene was meant to convey!" or "That's what that moment was about!"

If the above sounds off-putting, I absolutely do not mean it to be.  Le Quattro Volte is in many ways a wonderful piece of "art" film-making. Consistently beautiful to view, it sets you down in the middle of a place (a small mountain village in Calabria, Italy, above) and of lives (the townspeople, in particular an old shepherd and his herd of goats, below) that you would likely never get near in your own lifetime.

Because there is no audible dialog -- other than ambient sounds of townspeople occasionally talking (that you cannot quite understand, and for which no subtitles are supplied) -- and not a lick of narration by anyone, you simply have to keep your eyes and mind constantly on alert to figure out what is happening and why. This is challenging, and if you go to see this film with a companion, I wager you'll spend time immediately afterward, asking each other questions and exchanging viewpoints.

The movie opens on a gray/white screen, which, after a few moments, we determine is a kind of mist. This is coming up from ... ovens in the ground? So it seems. At first Frammartino's camera remains stationery from place to place, and we think we may be in for something Ozu-like. But no. Soon, he is moving that camera when necessary, taking us to church, to bed, to pasture and elsewhere

We're involved in all this, but often as much by the kind of game the director is playing with us, as by the film itself, which, though not officially a mystery, is still downright mysterious. And sometimes very amusing. A truck arrives in town and from it come what looks like extras in a Roman sword-and-sandal epic. But no, it's some sort of ceremony/pageant (above) for which the townspeople and their priest then leave. A young woman, arriving late for this event, is met by a barking dog which scares her and at which she tosses a stick. This leads, step by step, to one of the funniest movie scenes in recent memory and from there to the famous shot you see below (and on poster, top).

Ah, yes: those goats. You may be put in mind, as was I, of the documentary Sweetgrass, but as movie actors, these goats surpass those sheep by miles. They're as funny and versatile as they are fun to watch, and even their bleating sounds more interesting, individual and resonant than does that of the sheep. We actually witness the birth of one goat, below, and follow its progress until, well, you'll see...

So little do we get to know the humans in this film (including our leading man, that shepherd) and so little happens on one level (on another there's everything here from birth to death to car wreck to lumber-jacking, seen below) that the movie could easily be classified as an "experimental film."  Yet I wager that it will linger longer than a lot of other things you'll view this year.

Le Quattro Volte, from Lorber Films, opens this Wednesday, March 30, at Film Forum in New York City. You can learn of dates, screening times and even buy tickets by clicking here.  To see cities, dates and theaters, where the film will be playing across the country -- including Hawaii! -- click here, and scroll down.

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As a courtesy to my readers (via the courtesy of Lorber Films, of course), I am giving you the link to that exceptional press kit for the film.  But I urge you to see this movie first, challenge yourself to make the necessary connections, and then read the press materials to expand your understanding -- and probably enjoy some interesting surprises.