Too much to tell...

Too little time to tell it in...
There was the film Festival in Torino (Turin).
And seeing old friends from the days when we lived there.
Such a pleasure to be in the city, walking under its many arcades, drinking bicerin (!) or the incomparable thick hot chocolate.
Of course, I had my hair cut by the parruchiere whom I was recommended in 2006...
Here I am sitting in one of the many excellent cafes of Turin reading an Italian newspaper ...

What you can see of my hair reveals its shortened length!
I saw 18 films during the festival, many of which I could happily see again. Noteworthy were The Death of Stalin and The Genius and the Opera Singer and Darkest Hour.
None of these were fiction, all based on actual events; The Genius and the Opera Singer is a documentary showing a mother aged 90 (the former singer of the title) and her daughter (a very smart /clever girl!) now aged around 60, living together in a small apartment in New York, engaged in constant haggling dispute. Wonderfully filmed (the editing was superb) so that it flowed and grew, sometimes with flashbacks using photographs, sometimes through dialogue with the filmer, Vanessa (Stockley, from England!) whom we heard speaking. Without any commentary (that was its strength) the film revealed the attachment between the two women, together with the slumbering fury in the daughter, who was convinced that her evidently "failed" life was the result of her mother's inadequate mothering.
There is much more to say about this film; it contains hilarious brilliant dialogue, (Jewish) humour of great wit, and with clever camera work reveals layers of the lives of mother and daughter; so that at the end (and it was just over an hour long) I felt I had known these two women many years. I think many people, especially women, in the audience, recognized aspects of their relationship with their mother.
Several of the films I saw dealt with specifically Italian matters, such as Vento Soave (about water and air pollution in Brindisi, in the southern Italian province of Puglia where David and I kept the boat a couple of years ago); or Cento Anni (which I saw twice) about forms of racism and intolerance of those who are different (!) and the growth of fascism in Italy.
The most impressive film I saw was the Portuguese A Fabrica de Nada by Pedro Pinho from 2017. The title was translated "The nothing factory", a factory that stopped producing ... and the film was about the failure in western Europe (and wider) to ensure that there is some kind of equality of income (!) in society and time and money to enjoy life (it also raised the question of how different people experience enjoyment...). The problems of production and distribution were discussed, (there was a  group of bearded intellectuals speaking French who pondered the problems of Capitalism) ... I wondered if the maker of the film has read Pikerty's Capitalism (yet)?
The narrative followed the life of one of the factory workers and his girlfriend, showed his father, a former revolutionary who thought the only way to beat the system was using weapons/explosives (echoes of terrorist attempts to disrupt social order) and there was a moment of sheer genius, when the disconsolate factory workers had an offer of work from Argentina and suddenly:
burst into song and dance as in a musical comedy, beautifully choreographed and composed.
Completely unexpected and very powerful.
Ah yes,  Portugal... so much to tell...
Below: Looking towards Piazza Castello on a grey day

 

When the sun arrived and the snow shone, a corner of Torino: