In 2015, a theatrical company from Modena, decided to bring onstage one of the greatest novels in the history of literature. Moby Dick by Herman Melville. The novel immediately shows all its complexity, and in the following three years it will jeopardize the very future of the company. A theatrical machine of eight tons and thirteen meters high, that moves within an open square, with one hundred between actors and participants.

It is the story of Teatro dei Venti (Theater of the Winds) and the gestation of a monstrous work, of crossing destinies, of storms falling on hopes of women and men. But it is also the story of all of us, of our dreams and our obsessions. To have a reason to live or die for.

Directed by film-maker Raffaele Manco, the documentary titled “Moby Dick or Teatro dei Venti” is about a three years long theatrical project, focusing on the last six months of production, during which Teatro dei Venti’s company had to face a series of bureaucracy, climate, scenography building challenges and, above all, the continuous risk of breaking the budget. We will see the eight tons, ten meters wide, thirteen high stage building, pulled by ten actors in the center of a public square, becoming a shipyard on which another twenty actors will strum barrels, run, climb and build a ship that they will hoist, flip and transform into a whale. The center of everything, the novel, Moby Dick, with its captain Achab and his obsessive hunt for the White Whale, man against nature, the unknown.

If Achab is willing to sacrifice it all, will be the same for the company’s director? Will he also put in danger his actors’ “crew”? Where does the dream end and where the blind obsession starts?

And here is where the documentary places emphasis on. Is not the mere story of a theatrical company, risking to sink like the Pequod (the ship in Melville’s novel), but also is an instrument to show projects, ambitious dreams, obsessions inside every one of us. The audience can recognize itself in every different character presented in the documentary, through the courage and fear facing such a risky undertake, the quest into the unknown out there, but inside us as well, forever moving mankind’s history.

Our stories.

The documentary presents a narrative structure divided into chapters, which titles are borrowed from Melville’s novel. Every chapter is introduced by a series of sailors’ portraits, filmed in the darkness and illuminated by a single swinging light in front of their faces. Light and shadows moving suggest a ship rocking movement, as waves sway. Light and darkness reflect the characters’ state of mind: fear, unknown, hope.

The story and misadventures of the show are told by several members of the same company, portraited inside an empty, silent and stern theater, contrasting with the images, the loudness of their work on the street, made of blinding light, sweat and rain.

The visual style changes from photographic and austere to vivid. From solemnity to action. Form always follows content.

Graphic animations guide us through the storytelling. The illustrations by Matias Hermo were inspired by ancient books’ ones. All of them are handmade and digitized afterwards, distinguished by the use of a single color and the subtle moving elements inside of various sequences.

The documentary is the result of an independent production financed by the same director film-maker Raffaele Manco. Working on a reduced budget was filmed and edited in twelve months.

It was screened in public for the first time in November 2019, a finalist at the RIFF Roma Independent Film Festival. It saw a few screenings in Italy and abroad at theater festivals until the arrival of Pandemic in March 2020, after which it found no further form of distribution.