Triangle, Costanza Quatriglio, 63′, Italia 2014
Barletta, 3rd October 2011: after 100 years from the Triangle factory’s arson, in New York, five textile female workers die under a ghost knitwear factory’s ruins.
Cinema Primavera, friday 29th april 9.00, saturday 30th april 16.30, sunday 1st may 19.00
Title Triangle
Durata 63′
Year 2014
Country Italy
Genre Documentary
Language Italian
Director Costanza Quatriglio
Screenwriter Costanza Quatriglio
DOP Vincenzo Condorelli
Sound Vincenzo Urselli
Editing Letizia Caudullo
Sound Editing Marzia Cordò, Stefano Grosso
Music Teho Teardo
Cast Mariella Fasanella
Production Doclab, Factory Film con Rai Cinema in associazione con Istituto Luce Cinecittà
Distribution Istituto Luce Cinecittà
Festival Torino Film Festival 2014
Awards Premio Cipputi Torino Film Festival 2014
Synopsis
Barletta, 2011. After 100 years from the Triangle factory ‘s fire, when in 1911 got fire the 8th ground of skyscraper based in New York between Washington Square and Greene Street, the textile female workers die under a ghost knitwear factory’s ruins. Extracted alive from that ruins, Mariella assumes on herself all the world weight. With her we live the coming back to pre-industrial condition and the need of a new start, but also the immovable proud of who can do good her own job is the most complete gesture of every human being.
Director’s Statement
To narrate the work is one of the hardest challange, because the ambushes aplify themselves and can become traps. With the title’s choice I wanted to clarify, above all to myself, the risk of a thesis film: Triangle is the name of the textile factory, that got fire in 1911 in New York, causing the death of 146 persons, above all very young immigrant women in search of a future, but it’s a geometrical figure, that is to say something demonstrable through the going forward precision.
A film, on the contrary, is the most difficult thing to demonstrate and in my opinion it hasn’t to be demonstrative at all. I love the narrations proceeding revealing the invisible behind what appears; I love to build story on the experience, in the continue evolution of a beginning destined to transform itself. That’s why the intuition to match two so far in time and space events, was very risky. An intuition is definitely nor a postulate nor a theorem, but it’s alway the beginning of a journey.
While I was spotting in Barletta, I found a city crashed by the mourning, caused by the collapse apartment house. It was shot down by bulldozers, that weren’t aware of the prize in human lives. So I understood that the film’s visual key should have been the relationship between the New York’s magnificence at the beginning of the 1900s and the impoverishing of the urban landscape, that has gone beyond the post-modernity becoming empty and ruins. It’s the implosion of a civilization founded on the myth of that force called in the 1900s social oppression.
The production chain has been fragmented and instead a class conflict there are many non-conflicting human beings, whose existential and material condition is without any rights nor perception to have ones. But the workers’ state is the same of when there were the factory and regarding the relationship with the machine, too. That’s what Mariella Fasanella teaches to us: she the only survived worker, extracted alive from the apartment house’s ruins in Barletta.
The first time I met her, I felt something in her beyond her soul strength: she was like a goddess coming from another world and becoming a mean of truth, not that kind of verifiable truth, but rather something related to human being in front of the tragedy of the world. Because her tragedy is both private and public, it’s physical grief and social decadence.
That’s why I choose a narrative structure borrowed from the classic theatre. The heroine conducts the story, but there won’t be thinking nor elaboration without the voice of a community.
The plurality of the points of view grows from grief subdivision between who lost a sister, a relative or has lived that day in Barletta or New York, trying an experience, impressed indelibly in the city’s chromosomes.
Just like in a tragedy, the prologue uses up the fact turning on the misfortune: the factory’s launch, the industrialization, Triangle’s fire.
So it’s born under my eyes that invisible triangle, linking the points of convergence of our story.
The ascendent side begins on the 25th of March 1911 in New York, goes on with Taylorism, Fordism, the struggles and the achievements of the 1900s. The descendent side begins in Barletta on the 3rd of October 2011, a day in which falls down both an apartment house and an entire civilization. Here post- globalization is a synonym for the ruins, under which many new slaves lost their lives.
The third side is an empty space, what doesn’t appear, but it’s made visible by that purely expressive experience, only cinema can give.
The figurative element is given by the anamorphic frame, that allowed me to use complete archive footages, giving value to their uprightness, and multiplying the elements along the horizontal format.
Taking inspiration from cinema beginning, I combined the first filmmakers’ view on the rising industry and cities with shabby images, in which the cold factory’s neon light colors replace the black & white’s marvel.
That’s been the key for work on the music by Teho Teardo, alternating full and empty.
The textile workers dead in New York in 1911 had put in the factory the hopes of a good future, after passing through the ocean full of expectations and dreams, like every migrant. They were very young and their journey was not only to a new land promising resources and welcome, but also an essential journey inside their own existence and the building of themselves to discover the fundamental phases of their lives. The women from Barletta were daughters, sisters, mothers; one of them, very young was going to become grandmother. Some of them had started to work, when they were children and when they died, they’d never seen an employment contract, nor a decent place, where do in peace, what they’d learned to do very well. The memories I was given belongs to people, who wants to make the joy of life win and has the courage to get up every morning with the desire to go working.
The same courage, that Mariella has got to deal with what happened to her and her friends.
“Why, me?”, she asks herself. There’s no guilt in being alive, but yearning of beauty and purity’s feelings. You can restart from a love song, if this comforts in the middle of much pain. And there aren’t any triangles, nor theorems, nor conjectures, Mariella’s smile is the only possible antidote and that’s why I still thank her.
Costanza Quatriglio
Director’s bio-filmography
Palermo, 1973. After a degree in law, she attended Centro Sperimentale per la Cinematografia and graduated in Direction. She made a debut with the awarded fiction film L’Isola, shown in Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at Cannes film Festival in 2003. In 2012 Terramatta, shown in Venice days at Venice Film Festival, won the Nastro D’argento for the best documentary film. Con il fiato sospeso (2013), shown out of competition at Venice Film Festival, won the Gillo Pontecorvo Prize and a mention at Nastro d’Argento, thanks its mix between several language’s film genre. In 2014 she directed the episode Il Girotondo in 9×10=Novanta, realized for the Archivio Luce’s 90 years and shown during the Venice Days. In the same year she directed Triangle, that won the Cipputi Prize at Torino Film Festival and Nastro d’Argento. Her last documentary film is 87 ore (2015).
She’s one of the founder of Scuola d’Arte Cinematografica Gian Maria Volonté, a public and free film school based in Rome and she’s part of the board of Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia based in Sicily, Documentary section.
Filomgraphy (selection):
87 ore (2015), Triangle (2014), 9x 10= Novanta (episodio) (Con il fiato sospeso (2013), Terramatta (2012) Il mio cuore umano (2009), Migranti in cammino (2008), Il mondo addosso (2006), Raiz (2004), L’Isola (2003), Racconti per L’isola (2003), La borsa di Helene (2002), L’insonnia di Devi (2001), Il bambino Gioacchino (2000), Ècosaimale? (2000).