In this Italy of cities, we have perhaps forgotten about the regions. Of these physical territories of mountains, hills, plains, rugged and gentle, enveloping lines, where languages mix with each other, and horizons are not made of walls but of earth, trees, water, of unique characters and stories that slip here and there along river courses or bounce against the moon. And the writers these stories tell find themselves united by something deeper than mere aesthetic rules or historical periods. One of these territories is the Po Valley and its “margins” that slip into salt water or rise to the fresh air of the Apennines... And Ermanno Cavazzoni is not only one of those writers who can render all this to us in a unique way that represents it, but he is also a point of reference and a privileged observer of what is increasingly proving to be an important experience in Italian literature.
The Winter Sea is part of a project entitled Reduced Format. Free Rewritings of Amateur Cinema. A collective film that marks the meeting between Home Movies and a group of writers. Enrico Brizzi, Ermanno Cavazzoni, Emidio Clementi, Ugo Cornia and Wu Ming 2 who developed original texts finding in the images of the National Family Film Archive the opportunity to experiment with new narrative techniques. Il mare d'inverno is one of the five episodes that make up the work and that from time to time move between essay, short story, chronicle and digression united by a common matrix: the varied universe of Emilia-Romagna.
