Event Horizon

An Ode to the Earth

Fighting for the planet’s rights seems perfectly normal to us today—almost a given. We live in an era where, fortunately, it is those who go against the grain on the issue of environmental sustainability who are looked down upon; the so-called climate skeptics, that is, those who try to downplay the problem or dismiss it as the whim of a certain bored bourgeoisie, whose personal interests often conflict with those of green growth.

What today seems to us to be a given—an awareness that fully defines this historical period—has not always been an unshakable certainty; rather, it is the result of a significant campaign to raise awareness that has deep historical roots and is still being fought on the front lines.

In fact, it was in September 1962 that the American biologist Rachel Carson published a groundbreaking book titled Silent Spring.
The book provided a detailed analysis of the harmful effects of pesticides—particularly DDT—on the environment and human health.

Drawing on numerous examples and sources in her analysis, Carson was the first to establish a direct link between the use of chemical pesticides on crops, the unexplained mass die-off of insects, birds, and wildlife, the resulting decline in biodiversity, and the rise in serious human diseases such as cancer.

The book’s title is emblematic and struck a chord with readers of the time. The silent spring refers to the one brought about by the death of all the creatures that filled spring with the sounds of nature—such as insects and birds.

Today, the book is regarded as one of the first works to have sparked the environmental movement, which likely saw broader public engagement during this decade than in any other. It all began, however, in the late 1960s, when prevailing agricultural and industrial practices were called into question and efforts were made to raise public awareness of environmental issues. Rachel Carson’s book was immediately embraced as a sort of manifesto for the environmental movement, but it took years before the debate truly reached the institutions.

It was in 1969, during a UNESCO conference, that the idea was proposed to dedicate a day to the Earth and its protection, but it was not until April 22, 1970, when 20 million Americans, organized by activist and environmentalist Denis Hayes with the support of Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson, came together in a historic demonstration to defend our planet, that the date was established as Earth Day.

The crowd listens to the speakers in Union Square, while a man cleans the statue
© Associated Press (22nd april, 1970)

A student wearing a gas mask “sniffs” a magnolia flower in City Hall Park in New York
© Associated Press (22nd april, 1970)

Today, Earth Day is an annual event held on April 22 in more than 190 countries around the world to celebrate and raise public awareness of the importance of protecting the environment and promoting environmental sustainability.Ogni anno milioni di persone partecipano a varie attività volte alla sensibilizzazione collettiva su varie  questioni ambientali, come la pulizia di spiagge e parchi, la piantumazione di alberi e la promozione dell’energia rinnovabile.

For Cinemabruzzo, too, protecting the environment and the local landscape is a fundamental issue. For years, in fact, it has organized the Cinema e Ambiente Avezzano festival—a film festival dedicated specifically to exploring sustainable development—and the Cinema Abruzzo Campus, an artist residency entirely dedicated to “green” cinema. Cinemabruzzo is committed to ensuring that this issue remains in the public eye, especially in a region like Abruzzo, which prides itself on its natural beauty and scenic heritage.

Although Abruzzo has long been referred to as the “green lung of Europe” due to the presence of the Abruzzo, Lazio, and Molise National Reservation, which, with its 50,000 hectares, is certainly one of the largest natural reservations in Europe, recent analyses conducted by Italy for Climate through CIRO (Climate Indicators for Italian Regions) show that the Abruzzo region ranks around the Italian average for nearly all the indicators examined.

This is certainly an encouraging result, but efforts to raise awareness among the people of Abruzzo on these issues must continue, and it is hoped that Abruzzo will become one of the regions most committed to promoting green issues and implementing solutions for environmental sustainability and emissions reduction.

The “Green Lung of Europe” as seen from space in this image from ESA’s Envisat satellite, taken on June 6, 2010 © ESA

Chart generated by Italy4Climate comparing the Abruzzo region to the average of the other regions.
A wide range of parameters are examined: from CO2 emissions to the use of renewable energy sources, per capita energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions from industry, and other parameters available here
© Italy for Climate

Of course, cinema also has an inseparable connection to the land, especially Abruzzo cinema, which has always featured the land itself, the environment, and—in particular—the mountains as the main protagonists of stories set or produced in Abruzzo.
Indeed, there is no doubt that the majority of films shot in the Abruzzo region have primarily featured areas that are part of the region’s landscape heritage, such as the Abruzzo, Lazio, and Molise National Park or Campo Imperatore and the surrounding areas.
This makes the Abruzzo landscape and environment the primary asset for promoting its cinema—a landscape rich in evocative locations that have been so highly valued in the past by Italian cinema.

One of the Abruzzo films that best utilizes the land and nature within its narrative is Daniele Vicari’s L’orizzonte degli eventi, and on this occasion, we want to bring to light a little cinematic gem that few people know about.

The Gran Sasso National Research Laboratories, as seen from the outside.
Founded in 1985, they are affiliated with the National Institute of Nuclear Physics and are based in Assergi, in the province of L’Aquila.

Max Flamini (Valerio Mastandrea) is a young researcher working in the laboratories of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Gran Sasso (AQ). It is the early 2000s, a time of intense scientific research and globalization, and life in the lab involves competing with other institutes around the world, all vying to claim credit for the latest discoveries regarding the behavior of matter and antimatter.

After many years of working on particle physics research projects, Max finally has the opportunity to become director of the institute when his superior is transferred to CERN in Geneva. At this delicate juncture in his life, his father—a former convict—suddenly passes away, and Max finds himself caught up in a sensitive family dispute over his father’s inheritance, which he tries his best to ignore.

After the handover of the research project, the team began working hard on a neutrino experiment with the aim of gaining recognition within the scientific community, but innovative, pragmatic, and clearly verifiable results were slow in coming.

The atmosphere in the lab begins to grow tense, partly because now that Max is in charge of the research, he reveals himself to be tough, uncompromising, and authoritarian; but when he discovers that his research contains methodological errors, doubts, anxieties, and fears begin to take hold of him.
The path his team has taken seems to be leading nowhere, and at that point he decides to fabricate the research data in an attempt to save it.

After being caught falsifying data by a member of his team, Max is suspended from his position and forced to resign. Devastated and broken by what has happened, Max drives recklessly through the mountain roads of Campo Imperatore and, intending to end it all, deliberately veers off the road and plunges down a cliff.

The next morning, he is pulled alive from the mangled wreckage of his car. It is Bajram, a young Albanian shepherd, who rescues him and takes him to his home on Gran Sasso.

Wounded and alone in the mountains, Max is forced to adapt to life in the mountains and rebuild a relationship with himself that seemed irrevocably broken.
And so begins a long journey through the foothills of Gran Sasso, leading him to rediscover the primal connection between humankind and the earth.

Excerpts from the film Event Horizon by Daniele Vicari (2005)
© Fandango, Medusa Film

The film was shot entirely in Abruzzo, specifically in the Gran Sasso massif, on the Campo Imperatore plateau, and, for some of the final scenes, in the city of L’Aquila. Many of the scenes were actually filmed in the INFN laboratories (now the Gran Sasso National Laboratories, LNGS).

Vicari’s work is emblematic because it contrasts the hierarchical, gloomy, mechanical life of the laboratory—marked by technology, machinery, scientific rigor, personal sacrifice, and bureaucracy—with the natural life of the shepherd, characterized by schedules dictated by the sun, hard work untethered from money, and a constant relationship with the earth and the elements, where the primordial experience of that “Homo Homini Lupus”—coined by Plautus and taken up by Hobbes in De Cive — still lives on.

In addition to this clear contrast between environments and ways of living, as well as different perspectives on life and relationships with others, the film inevitably also contrasts two distinct moral codes: that of the scientist, who lives by a mathematical law of cost-benefit analysis, and that of the shepherd—a man of the mountains—who lives according to his own conception of what is right.

In this drama with a bitter ending, Abruzzo takes center stage, and its dual nature is fully revealed: on the one hand, a vision of the future where scientists from around the world gather in a laboratory nestled in the mountains to study subatomic particles capable of explaining matter and finding innovative solutions for the future; and on the other hand, that of a world beyond all this, living by rules carved into granite, partly detached from social norms but faithful to the ancestral laws of the land.

Samuele Coccione

An exile by necessity, but mostly out of masochism.
I love movies, books, and boredom.
I’ve been writing about Abruzzo cinema ever since it was “cool”
to be stuck at home.
I live in Milan, but I dream of working remotely with my feet soaking in the Tirino River.