A stranger journey
Diary – 90 pages – EN/IT – 2024
In November 2022, Antonio Morra and I left to shoot A stranger quest, a documentary film on the atlas work of David Rumsey, one of the most important collectors of historical maps in the world.
After delving into the world of maps by inviting some of the world’s leading experts, we decided to explore the memories and places of David’s life. We left with him on a journey across the North American landscape, from San Francisco to the Smoke Creek Desert up to MacKinnons Brook, in Nova Scotia.
The film, as it always happens, becomes something more than a film. The exploration of David’s life, a long accumulation of objects, buildings, relationships, spaces and time, begins to be reflected in us. Antonio, who had brought with him an analogue film camera, between one scene and another takes photographs of landscape and light, boundless spaces, wild animals curious towards man, endless forests, houses that look like leviathans asleep in an eternal geography. I, on the other hand, write my reflections: shooting a film basically means learning to watch from scratch every time and making your first feature film is a bit like becoming an adult, dealing with your own sense of being a man.
The directions of our stories, one visual, one written, are gradually swallowed up by the cold desert of Nevada and the snowy forests of Nova Scotia. The American landscape begins to mock every sense of self, every selfishness, every idea, devouring speeches, ideas, images. Everything goes back to being just a fragment, a handkerchief of time and space. Human life, immersed in endless space, reveals itself for what it is: a strange journey in a short time.
