In the modern film scene, Franco Piavoli is an artist who his films can identify. Ethereal, dreamy, and almost magical in its rarefied atmospheres, Paivoli’s cinema is something that goes beyond the concept of documentary cinema.
It is not only about exploring the nature surrounding us and its microcosms but also about the interaction between human beings and a world that seems to belong to them less and less. It is no coincidence that the pace of At the First Breath of Wind, as it was for The Blue Planet or Nostos, may seem far too slow in the eyes of a viewer accustomed to multiplex fruition. People are no longer used to the pace of nature, an entity from which we have now dangerously deviated and which appears to us more and more like a weekend away interlude.
It is another reason why Franco Piavoli’s cinema should instead be supported with great interest by more than just a niche audience, the same one that flaunts ineffable television naturist culture after every episode of Superquark.
Piavoli investigates, analyzes, and carefully observes those small miracles that happen every moment, such as the chromatic variations of a leaf due to the daily walking of the sun and the grass moved by the wind. These things do not need the hand of man, who sees a danger to his civilized life in his lack of control.
A socio-anthropological analysis, then, and an authentic rural fairy tale punctuated by the thousands of small happenings of a summer day, expertly photographed only in natural light and brought to a close as naturally as one goes to sleep at night.
At the First Breath of Wind is a joy for the eyes of those who will feel like forgetting that one does not live by cars and bypasses alone.