Michelangelo Frammartino's "Il buco" — Unearthing our past

When a team of speleologists descended 700 meters into the Bifurto Abyss in Cosenza, Calabria, in 1961, they discovered that the underground caverns were the third deepest in the world and the deepest in Europe. Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Frammartino retraces that mission six decades later with a cast of locals and their livestock in his latest documentary, “Il buco” (“The Hole”).

Inspiration for the film came while he was on location shooting his 2007 documentary, “Le quattro volte” (“Four Times”). Officials in the Pollino mountains, which stretch between Calabria and Basilicata, showed him what appeared to be just another sinkhole. Frammartino failed to understand their enthusiasm until they tossed a large stone into the void. It disappeared without making a sound. He was so overcome by the experience and the eerie landscape, he was haunted for years, compelling him to make his current film, one of many rooted in nature.

“I was born in Milan, but my family is from Calabria. My parents come from a small town on the Ionian coast called Caulonia. This is where I spent my summers as a child and where I experienced a sense of freedom and deep fusion with nature and everything around me,” he told me in an interview during the 12th edition of the Tribeca Film Festival.

That bond has been a driving force behind his filmmaking, leading him to explore the connection between humans and the outdoors.

“We tend to forget the origins of nature and that (we are) deeply related to other species,” he said. “I love to work on this unspoken bond. With this philosophy, I am more challenged to shoot scenes more creatively.”

Frammartino puts a poetic spin on the caverns, capturing the tranquility of its rural location. Driven more by image than plot, the film includes wide, sweeping shots of fog rolling through the mountain valleys enhanced only by natural light and the sounds of nature. Scenes set around a campfire are illuminated by the flames and small lanterns alone.

Locals tend to their flocks with the grandeur of the mountain ranges in the background, conjuring a sense of the “old country” that we associate with our ancestors. To say that these locations are off the beaten path is an understatement. The Italy we see in Frammartino’s films isn’t the Italy they trot out in travel shows, or even the Italy most of us encounter when we visit there. Frammartino has a talent for discovering and sharing precious remnants of an Italian way of life that has disappeared from most of the peninsula.

The ancient tradition of “la foresta che cammina" (“the forest that walks”) is one such treasure. Frammartino’s 2013 film, “Alberi” (“Trees”), brought attention to a nearly forgotten arboreal rite in which the men of the village cover themselves in leaves, transforming themselves into mystical walking trees. The film helped revive the ritual, which had been practiced for centuries in Satriano di Lucania in the Basilicata region. Well-received by young audiences in the South when it was released, “Alberi” captivated New Yorkers when it was presented as an installation at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Frammartino’s philosophy of nature has its roots in the fifth century B.C. and the writings of Pythagoras. The ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician believed that our souls are reincarnated four times — as minerals, vegetables, animals, and humans — until they ultimately become immortal.

That theory was the basis for Frammartino’s 2010 film, “Le quattro volte.” Profound and poetic in its message and visual landscape, it depicts the connection between man, animals and nature. The New York Times described it as “an idiosyncratic and amazing film so full of surprises — nearly every shot contains a revelation.” Frammartino carries on this practice of spotlighting the ancient in a new world with his latest film. 

“Il Buco” is available to stream on Amazon. "Le quattre volte" is available through Kanopy.

-Written by Jeannine Guilyard for April 2024 issue of Fra Noi Magazine. Click here to subscribe.