Italie n'est pas un pays pauvre

Another film on industrial progress. Joris Ivens was commissioned by Enrico Mattei, head of the Italian oil company ENI to make a film on the benefits of national recovery of oil . The film was intended for television and had to sustain Mattei's vision. The film is in three parts: the first part Fire in the Po Valley is about the recovery and distribution of methane in the Po Valley. The second part is divided in two: partly devoted to the cities of Venice and Ravenna, and the production of gaz, partly a Story of Two Trees, in which the impoverished life of seven peasant families depending on one olive tree is opposed to the future benefits of the so-called 'christmas trees': the metal constructions with their permanent flames for controlling the gas outlets. The third part is set around the mariage of a Sicilian girl to a North Italian man, working on an offshore oil rig. Joris Ivens uses some new techniques in this film, like hand-held cameras and speed film and the technique of interviewing for television. The last with quite some irony. The film was seriously cut down by the Italian television RAI, for it showed to much poverty, and shown on television with the caption fragments of a film by Joris Ivens.