An Italian Hill Town

CIVITA is a poetic, observational film about Civita di Bagnoregio, an exquisitely beautiful Italian hill town 80 miles north of Rome. Known as both the enchanted city in the sky and citta che muore—the dying city—Civita sits atop a cone of volcanic stone. First inhabited by Etruscans in the 6th century B.C. and later by the Romans, the town is separated from the mainland as a result of centuries of violent earthquakes and erosion. Despite the loss of whole sections of the town to landslides and quakes, people have carried on living as their ancestors lived, day-to-day, century after century. The intention of the film is to capture the spirit and poetry of this fragile, ancient place by recording its daily and seasonal life with the passing of winter, spring, summer, fall.

The camera follows a Mediterranean sun as it extends and attenuates light across the decumanus maximus (Roman Road), piazza, church and bell tower, arched doorways, single surviving walls of houses set on a sheer precipice, grape and olive harvests, colossal reinforcement projects constructed to stabilize cliffs that crumble like ricotta cheese, swarms of invading tourists and encounters with the remaining long-term inhabitants who give witness to past and present, attempting to keep hold of the thread of hill town life that has worn so thin.

Civita’s year-round residents are now fewer than 10, though over a million international tourists scrambled over the ruins last year. The enchanted city in the sky is becoming a postcard city—a commodity for consumption. The ancient social fabric and daily seasonal life are unraveling. Memories and culture are vanishing. The songs and stories of Vittoria Medori, Civita’s 99-year-old matriarch, and the special winemaking skills of Antonio Bastoni will exist no longer.

Yet the citta che muore resists death. CIVITA, the film, will deftly turn this hill town’s story into an allegory that urges us to consider: Can this ancient culture be authentically preserved?