Go to: 'Press Kit'

SELECTED INTERNATIONAL PRESS CLIPPINGS
FOR ‘THE BIG QUESTION’

VARIETY
Robert Koheler, November 12th 2004
“In the intriguing and surprisingly witty doc “The Big Question,” the king of all queries is “What is God?” The answers gathered …range from deep devotion to solid skepticism. Cabras and Molinari approach their weighty subject with a light touch, structuring their work along a series of questions bridged by brief, slightly mystical and purely visual transitions.

AFI AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE
Shaz Bennet, November 2004
With sweeping directorial vision and a powerfully poetic narrative, the filmmakers symbolically continue returning to a white dog traveling alone through valleys, mountains and ghost towns of the Lucania region of Italy. Weaving these images seamlessly with the interviews, THE BIG QUESTION achieves a rich visual and spiritual sensibility unparalleled today.

LA GAZZETTA DEL MEZZOGIORNO
Serafino Paternoster, 19th Nov 2005
It has to be said immediately: This is a true masterpiece. Perhaps not since PierPaolo Pasolini’s “Gospel” has a film which is able to tell of the relationship between man and religion in so effective, suggestive and at times ironic a way been seen on the big screen…In some cases, there exists a fleeting difference between a film and a documentary, but when the two forms cross, the result is a work of art.

TIME OUT
Yael Shov, July 2005
A documentary filmed, directed and edited marvelously

FILMCRITIC.COM
Matt Langdon, November 2004
The answers are surprising, thoughtful, enigmatic, and often entertaining. It's also a very beautifully shot, scored, and artfully edited film. And, yes, Mel Gibson is one of the talking heads who tells us what he believes.

CINEMA.IT
Maurizio G. De Bonis, 28th Nov 2005
This documentary often touches the extremities of absolute depth, exactly because it underlines the estrangement that every subject finds in defining God…There are delirious, moving and authentically tragicomic songs, in the which not so much the supernatural, but the heartbreaking fragility of human beings, and their real solitude is perceivable.

IL VENERDI
Federica Lamberti Zanardi, November 19th 2004
The documentary is a journey through spirituality with strong difficult questions . . . don’t think that “The Big Question” is a backstage of “The Passion”. No, it is something completely different. It is a journey inside oneself, a return to questions that for many have disappeared in today’s lexicon.

VARIETY
Amy Dawes, November 4th 2004
No “making of,” The Big Question is gorgeously shot and meditatively paced . . .

ROLLING STONE
June 2005
…the result is not a backstage. It isn’t a simple documentary either. The Big Question, inspired by Pasolini’s “Comizi d’amore” is rigorous (in the direction), ambitious (in the questions and the searching for answers on the divine) and inspired

ALTERNATIVE FILM GUIDE/CINEMAMINIMA
André Soares, March 3rd, 2005
What The Big Question does instead is make us think about questions that are all too infrequently asked: How do our cultural and social backgrounds influence—or downright determine—what we believe in? For instance, if a fundamentalist Christian from Tennessee, U.S., had been born in Saudi Arabia, would he or she be instead a fundamentalist Muslim? Or vice versa? Are religion and spirituality one and the same? Is religion a spiritual path or is religious dogma an obstacle to spiritual enlightenment? And what if there is no God? The Big Question dares us to stop and ponder.

LA STAMPA
Alessandra Levantesi, November 17th 2004
The directors declare that they were inspired by Pasolini’s “Comizi d’Amore”, but their variation is stylistically far more refined.

TAGLIO CORTO
Tommaso Casini, Jan 2005
A brave and new idea, which a strong psycho-sociological approach… The work explores the spontaneous feelings that only point-blank question can provoke. The result is impressive. Great care has been taken with the cinematography, which surprisingly is all in digital. In between the interviews, beautiful images of the Sassi di Matera give the viewer moments of reflection and esthetic pleasure. The locations are portrayed in a surreal and oniric fashion.

WWW.NONSOLOCINEMA.COM
Giovanni Santoro
In this work with find all the psychological introspection, the meditation and contemplation on the mystery of God, which in spite of all the blood, the shreds of flesh in Mel Gibson’s colossal it did not surface. A film to confront oneself with spiritual queries that today is more than ever crucial.

CINEMAVVENIRE.IT
Sergio Di Lino
It does not often happen to see a documentary that is clear, finely polished, coherent and at the same time so enjoyable to watch. This is a work that manages to combine artistic inquiry and entertainment…The Big Question is also a great comedy. A “human comedy” in Balzac’s conception. It is a highly incisive group portrait that not even the most attentive contemporary observers of Italian costume and society have been able to reach.

CORRIERE DELLA SERA
Giovanna Grassi, November 11th 2004
Another Passion is hitting the screens and it will certainly create much discussion just as Mel Gibson’s film

HA’ARETZ
Goel Pinto, July 2005
One of the most beautiful, most interesting and innovative documentaries of the 2005 Jerusalem Film Festival is “The Big Question”. The directors filmed behind the scenes of “The Passion”, but this isn’t your run of the mill documentary on the subject. On the contrary, its originality is what makes it so interesting.

IL QUOTIDIANO
Isabella Marchialo, 20 Nov 2005
Cabras and Molinari put together an archive of profound humanity: religions, ideas, convictions and uncertainties linked by the knowledge of an inexplicable fragility, that which trembles in the soul in front of the “big question”.

LA PLUME NOIRE
Fred Tom
Directors Francesco Cabras and Alberto Molinari have paid close attention to the visual aspect of the documentary, giving it a very artistic look. It's obvious that with such a deep subject they have been trying to distance their work from the usual dry and boring documentaries.

Up to: Selected International Press Clippings for ‘The Big Question’

PRESS KIT

GANGA
presents

‘THE BIG QUESTION’

a film di
Francesco Cabras and Alberto Molinari

All of us in our lives have been touched by this question…

LONG SYNOPSIS

What were the existential and absolute quiries that many of us begun to pose ourselves between puberty and adolescencehoping for final answers from our teachers, parents, priests or older brothers?
The documentary is based on an idea which is both very simple, but at the same time quite complex: it poses extremely direct questions to a large and diverse group of people regarding their own intimate relationships with God, spirituality, and faith. One of the questions is, “Who is God for you?” A question simultaneously banal and very difficult for which the response could not only take hours but for some is a lifelong quest. In this case, the idea and the experiment are to demand nippy responses that are immediate and devoid of superstructures. The Directors utilize the apparent limits of an extemporaneous interview as a means for reaching brief moments of truth and sincerity. The foundation of the documentary is given by the vast heterogeneity of the human beings interviewed, each with its different, culture, religion, social and geographical background. The fact that this group of people all worked on a set of a film about the passion of Jesus Christ provided for a far more attentive and profound answers.
That which one wishes to gain is a vast, extreme, delicate, rational but poetic, inflexible and hazy, range of differences in personal spiritual experience. This documentary speaks of one of the very few aspects of life that touches every human being, atheist, agnostic, mystic or those who have either not defined their creed or do not wish to go there.
The intention is that the vision of this documentary can interest anyone and capture the attention of the viewer, and that one will be touched profoundly, but can also have be entratained. There are very moving and inspiring moments, but also testimonies that are striking and fun in their immediacy and ingenuity.
The direction of the interviews is simple, as well as rigorous and painstakingly photographed like large-format Polaroids. The testimonies are sewed with decontextualized images of a white dog wondering among the Sassi and of the prehistoric churches of Matera in southern Italy. These places are depicted in a somewhat destructuralized manner, surreal and oneiric along with an original soundtrack especially composed to build a purely narrative and aesthetic textile.
Work on the documentary took nearly a year and a half, from shooting to editing and music recording. The original music score was composed by orchestra director Alessandro Molinari and by musicians from Italy, Mongolia, India and Honduras. Amongst these are Kamal Sabri, Enk Jarghal, Khaoticos and Maurizio Iorio.
The inspiring film for this project has been Pier Paolo Pasolini’s ‘Comizi d’amore’.

CAST

GREG (the dog)
He was found among other six stray dogs in the countryside nearby the remote village of Matera. When he saw his future mate, Nando (our assistant director of TBQ), he got up and followed him instinctively. He is renowned and loved by all the inhabitants of the ancient village of the Sassi in Matera where he freely wonders about and lives with Nando. He is half wolf and has never been trained but is extremely smart and communicative. His long time fiancée is Isabella and they had seven puppies. His name was given because when Nando was driving him home Gregory Isaac was playing on his stereo.
Greg’s special grace, beauty and dignity persuaded the directors to feature him in the documentary as a symbol of interior research, despite the tremendous difficulties in working with such an independent and free spirit.

REST OF THE CAST
Both people native of Matera and those working in the production of the film on Jesus Christ.

PRODUCTION COMPANY

GANGA
As production company it was established in 1999 by Francesco Cabras, Alberto Molinari and Francesco Struffi. It has realized several film documentaries, musical videoclips, short features and commercials. In the following filmography where it is not indicated the direction and the photography are by Francesco Cabras and Alberto Molinari.

 

FILMOGRAPHY

DOCUMENTARIES
- ‘Una Grande Fortuna’ dur. 60’ (subject: among fiction, documentary and musical. A surreal ‘on the road’ fairytale of a young american musician looking for himself and his uncle’s inheritance through the italian region of Piemonte). 2003
- ‘Sono incinta’ dur. 52 (subject: 69 men tell about their feelings after knowing their girlfriend were pregnant). 2004. Winner at Bellaria Film Festival 2004. (only production)
- ‘Spaghetti Requiem/Italian Soldiers’ (subject: the adventures of 13 young italian actors involved in the hollywood production of Oscar winner John Madden’s film ‘Captain Corelli’s mandolin’) 2001. Winner LAIFA Los Angeles Italian Film Awards, Med FilmFest, Alternative FilmFestrival, selection Torino Filmfestival, Bellaria, IDFA Amsterdam.
- ‘Il Compromesso, la tragedia di Michelangelo e la tomba di Giulio II’ dur. 42’ (subject: Moses of Michelangelo, original music composed by Michael Nynmann) 1999, Toronto Festival 2001
- ‘Corpi, il ‘900 scolpito’ dur. 30’ (subject: the body in the sculpture of ‘900, with Lindsay Kemp) 2001
- ‘La Montagna Cava’ dur. 30’ (subject: the marble caves in Carrara) 2000
- ‘Il Pennello e la Spada’ dur. 30’ (subject: Mattia Preti the Caravaggio-like painter) 1999
- ‘A portrait of Joseph Koudelka’ 10’ (one of the few video interwiews of the Magnum photographer)
- ‘The Fish Market’ dur. 10’ (subjects: Fish Market of Venice) 2000
- ‘L’Arsenale di Pippo’ dur. 52’ (subject: the theatre of Pippo Delbono) 2000
- ‘Her Bijit’ dur. 1.05’ (subject: theatre play by Pippo Delbono) 2000
- ‘Santarcangelo dei Teatri’ dur. 53’ (subject: the avant-guarde theatre Festival in Santarcangelo di Romagna) 1998

VARIOUS
- ‘A pena do pane’ a feature short movie directed by Lucia Grillo (only production). 2004
- ‘Tinte Forti’ a feature short-movie dur. 17’ selected at Incontri Internazionali di Cinema di Sorrento and Arcipelago Film festival of Roma. 2000
- ‘L’aria’ a feature short-movie dur. 12’ directed by Daniele Prato (only production). 2003
- Commercials for:
‘Burger King’ Grey Agency
‘Aquafresh’ Grey agency
‘Ministero dei Beni Culturali’ of Italy
Al Afandi Trade and Enterprises of Saudi Arabia
ABC Beirut, Tourism Department of Lebanon
- Report for Greenpeace International, dur. 3h, about the enviromental impact of shrimpfarming in south Honduras. 2000
- Report for Greenpeace International, dur. 2h, about the enviromental impact of the drifnets in the Mediterranean sea. 2000

MUSIC VIDEOS
- ‘Save the world’ Giorgia, Bmg
- ‘Tutto quello che un uomo’ Sergio Cammariere, Emi
- ‘Annina’ Max Gazzè, Virgin
- ‘Amore psicologico’ Neri per caso, Emi
- ‘Non era previsto’ Max Gazzè, Virgin
- ‘Timido ubriaco’ Max Gazzè, Virgin.
- ‘Sorella mia’ Sergio Cammariere, Emi
- ‘Via da questo mare’ Sergio Cammariere, Emi
- ‘‘La sassaiola dell’ingiuria’ Capa Rezza, Extra Virgin
- ‘Dietro a un vetro’ Velvet, EMI
- ‘Tutto ciò che c’è c’è già’ Capa Rezza, Extra Virgin
- ‘La musique et la chance’ Nocca, Extra Virgin
- ‘Convence me’ Carlos Sabillon, Telecinquo (Latino Grammy Awards 2000)
- ‘Flaconi di divertimento’ Miele, Virgin
- ‘Goodbye is my name’ Matthew Marston
- ‘Come un girasole’ Valeria Rossi, Bmg
- ‘Finnegan’s wake’ Pippo Pollina e Franco Battiato, Storie di Note

LIST OF AWARDS AND NOMINATIONS
- ‘Italian Soldiers/Spaghetti Requiem’ 2001:
Winner LAIFA Los Angeles Italian Film Awards 2002, Alternative Film Festival 2002, Med Film Festival 2002, Selection at Torino FilmFestival 2001, Bellaria FilmFestival 2002, Cambridge FilmFestival 2002, IDFA Amsterdam FilmFestival 2001, Napoli Film Festival 2002, Maremma Film Festival 2002
- ‘The Compromise, the Tragedy of Michelangelo’ 1999:
Selection Festival di Montreàl 2001 and Pieve di Cadore Art Film Festival 2004
- ‘Convence me’ 2000:
Selection Grammy Latino Awards Los Angeles 2000
- ‘Sono Incinta’ 2004:
Winner at Bellaria Film Festival 2004
- ‘Sorella mia’ 2002:
Winner Fandango Festival Best Photography Kodak Award
- ‘E allora ciao intanto’ 2002:
Winner Festival di videoclip Fandango 2002 Audience Award
- ‘Non era previsto’ 2002:
Winner Best Video of the Year Premio Etichette Indipendenti di Faenza 2002, Selection at Incontri Internazionali del Cinema di Avanca Portogallo 2002
- ‘Finnegan’s wake’ 1999:
Winner at Premio Etichette Indipendenti Faenza 2000
- ‘Tinte Forti’ 1999 :
Selection at Bergamo FilmFestival 2002, Arcipelago FilmFestival di Roma 2000, Incontri Internazionali Cinema di Sorrento 2000,
- ‘The Venice Fish Market’’ 2000:
Selection at Corto in Sabina 2002
- ‘La fitta sassaiola dell’ingiuria’ 2000:
Selection at Arcipelago FilmFestival di Roma 2001
- ‘Il timido ubriaco’ 2000:
Selection at Arcipelago FilmFestival di Roma 2000

 

GANGA S.r.l.

Largo Generale Gonzaga del Vodice, 4
00195 - Roma - ITALIA

Tel. +39 06 37511896
Tel-fax +39 06 37511896

info@gangafilm.com

www.gangafilm.com

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