Italo Calvino childhood home movies premiere at Venice Film Festival

For the first time, home movies from the 1920s featuring a young Italo Calvino are being showcased at the 2023 Venice International Film Festival. These 9mm films, filmed by Calvino's father, were found in a shoebox while relocating his library from Campo Marzio to the Biblioteca Nazionale di Roma. Digitized by Home Movies, the footage is included in the documentary 'Lo scrittore sugli alberi' (The Writer in the Trees), directed by Duccio Chiarini. This film, which premieres at the 20th Giornate degli Autori, uses Calvino's 1957 novel 'Il Barone Rampante' (The Baron in the Trees) as a narrative lens, linking the character Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò to Calvino's life. Co-written with Sofia Assirelli, it features insights from various contributors, including Paolo Virzì. This documentary celebrates the centenary of Calvino's birth and revisits his artistic legacy.