Canone effimero

What begins as an ode to the slow pace at which a zampugna, a form of Calabrian bagpipe, is made, opens out into an ethnological musical tour into unchartered territory: an Italy of countless small traditions, often only passed on orally. In Canone effimero, brothers Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio present eleven local customs of performing music, passed down over generations which have survived to this day for them to find, from regions as different as Calabria, Marche, Liguria and Sicily. The square frames of the film continually find new ways to combine landscapes and their inhabitants into one unit. With calm and care and in suitably choral fashion, Canone effimero conveys a sense of the transgenerational based on practising, listening, learning and the human skill for imitation. Despite of each tradition being deeply rooted in nature as well as the region from which it originated, the film is free of the sort of nostalgic campanilismo that gets drunk on its own localities. Instead, it gradually weaves together the different local traditions into a network of possible countercultures. A film that seems anachronistic at first glance, but proves to be radically contemporary.