The Tree of Wooden Clogs
The Tree of Wooden Clogs
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3h 7m
Directed by Ermanno Olmi • 1978 • Italy
Starring Luigi Ornaghi, Francesca Moriggi, Omar Brignoli
A painterly and sensual immersion in late nineteenth-century Italian farm life, Ermanno Olmi’s THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS lovingly focuses on four families working for one landowner on an isolated estate in the province of Bergamo. Filming on an abandoned farm for four months, Olmi adapted neorealist techniques to tell his story, enlisting local people to live as their own ancestors had, speaking in their native dialect on locations with which they were intimately familiar. Through the cycle of seasons, of backbreaking labor, love and marriage, birth and death, faith and superstition, Olmi naturalistically evokes an existence very close to nature, celebrating its beauty, humor, and simplicity but also acknowledging the feudal cruelty that governs it. Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1978, THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS is intimate in scale but epic in scope, a towering, heart-stirring work of humanist filmmaking.
Restored by the Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata, with funding provided by The Film Foundation.
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THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS Edition Intro
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Mike Leigh on THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS
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Ermanno Olmi on THE TREE OF WOODEN CL...
In this interview, conducted in 2008 by film critic Lorenzo Codelli, director Ermanno Olmi discusses THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS and how it captures a peasant way of life that he was among the last to witness.