Columbus Film

Mondo documentary.

An arsonist tries to shake up the despairing inhabitants of a village who can't communicate with each other.

Poet-filmmaker Jørgen Leth taps his own earliest inspirational veins by free-floating through a camera/microscope-enhanced set of poems with love as their first and final subject. For example, how a tropical island woman prepares for a meeting with her lover. The film was shot partly in the South Pacific with more than a nod to social anthropoliogist B. Malinowski's historical work The Sexual Life of Savages.

The documentary illustrates the history of the birth and development of the porticoes module in Bologna, starting from the Middle Ages. After a brief historical investigation on the origin of the arcades and on the revolution that affected urban architecture following their introduction, we analyze the social impact that these had, and still have, on the lives of Bolognese citizens. The porch, among other things, is presented as an architectural solution capable of facilitating meeting and communication.