ViaggionellavalledelPoallaricercadicibigenuiniSeason1

Mario Soldati's groundbreaking documentary series for the newly established national television channel RAI looks at the customs and culinary traditions of Northern Italy's Po Valley. Halfway between a journalistic reportage and an ethnographic investigation, Soldati's work, with its educational aim, stood in contrast with the dominant sentiments of Italy in the late fifties. At a time of rapid economic growth, industrialisation, and push for progress, where the backwardness of rural areas was considered a national embarassment, Soldati, with his friendly approach rich in humour, looked candidly at uneducated peasants, finding great values in their ways of living, much like some others artists and intellectuals from Northern Italy were doing at that time, like Carlo Levi, Cesare Pavese, Pasolini, David Maria Turoldo.