Alessandro Lucarini

What's Behind the Hill?

6'00''

Alessandro’s father, Giuseppe Lucarini, grew up in the Italian countryside in the 1960s. During this same period, television brought opportunities and hope to the world of farmers, a world that was precarious and without prospects. Within a few years, the Italian countryside depopulated as farmers moved to cities in search of a better life. The limitations of a small horizon, and the monsters from the stories told in the darkness in front of the fireplace, disappeared in the cold light of television. Are we sure that there is something beyond the horizon? What if the monsters haven't vanished but simply moved inside the TV screen?

This video work combines archival television footage and personal family archive with the voice recordings and testimony of Giuseppe, who was born and lived between 1954 and 1974 in the Italian countryside before moving to Urbania (population: 6,829) in the Marche hills. The project explores these two contracting worlds in its attempt to understand whether or not the promises made by television, to the farming world, were fulfilled.