Busseto has seven thousand inhabitants. Everyone knows each other at the bar.
Inside the seventeenth-century Palazzo del Monte di Pietà, there’s a public library holding rare books, unexpected objects and five centuries of history.
The Nuremberg Chronicle, printed in 1493. Aldus Manutius’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, with a declaration of love hidden in the opening letters of its chapters. A sixteenth-century copy of Zodiacus Vitae, a book that survived censorship.
A book made of tin. Fortunato Depero’s bolted book. Matisse’s Jazz and an early pop-up book by Andy Warhol. Books that become objects, then surprise you again when you open them.
And a fortepiano where a very young Giuseppe Verdi fell in love.
That's what this place is. Hidden in a small town in Emilia, quietly holding five centuries of human thought.
I directed and shot the film with Kreativehouse for Fondazione Cariparma. Two versions: one for social, one projected inside the library itself. The challenge wasn't finding what to show. It was deciding what to leave out.
The film is built around three ideas: what endures, what remains, what you never expect to find.
