From the Pole to the Equator (Dal polo all'equatore From the Pole to the Equator)

This is a fascinating and thoroughly engrossing result of three year’s work by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, who have been making offbeat films since 1976. Now they have exploited the newly discovered film archives of Luca Comerio (1874-1940), a pioneering figure of Italo docucinema. Comerio was a court photographer, allowed to film the landing of italian marines in Libya 1911, and was the only official film reporter with the Italian army in World War I. Gianikian and Lucchi have photographed more than 500,000 frames of material from the positive and original negative. There is no dialog, and the music is a minimalist score by two Americans. Pic grips the viewer throughout (Variety, 25.03.87)