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The Italian Swiss documentary film Spira Mirabilis directed by Massimo D’Anolfi and Martina Parenti was screened on September 4th, 2016 at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival. It was selected to compete for the Golden Lion.

Synopsis:

Spira Mirabilis deals with immortality through the four elements of nature: water, air, earth and fire. To these four, we add the fifth Aristotelian element of ether which acts as prologue and epilogue of the film. The concept of immortality in the sense of living forever implies being born and overcoming death and we would like to examine this notion through a “humanist” perspective in order to restore the nobility of aspirations and human behaviour that goes beyond time and successive generations. By “humanist” we mean a viewpoint that puts at the centre of everything a man who, through his habitual and meticulous way of acting, striving and studying, finds his place in the world and, thanks to this, manages to accept death, to come to terms with it and overcome it. The film, which is a visual symphony, is shot in four different places around the world and features four different stories that tell and show a reaching out towards immortality. We dedicate the element water to immortality in science, that of air to the immortality of art, that of earth to the immortality of faith and that of fire to the immortality of feelings. Ether, linked to the cosmos and the stars, is a tribute to the film industry. A symbol of perfection and infinity, “the wonderful spiral”, Spira mirabilis as it was defined by the mathematician Jackob Bernoulli, is a logarithmic spiral the rays of which grow as it turns and whose curve “wraps itself” around the pole while never actually touching it. – Source: www.cineuropa.org

Press Conference:

Video on www.raiplay.it

Film Trailer:

Film Excerpt:

You need good headphones or speakers for the playback of the bass sound.

Rudy Kendall, in his own words “general manager” of an “international conglomerate of steelpan and handpan instrument manufacturers”, has published a harsh critique on PANArt and the documentary Hang – a discreet revolution in his blog and in the forum of When Steel Talks . In his point of view this documentary is “A Propaganda-Filled, Dissemination of Lies”, and it’s allegedly PANArt’s agenda to remove the Hang from its place as descendant of the steelpan.

As editor of the Hang Library, who has published the film documentary in question online, I cannot leave this without a comment, especially as it turns out, that this excessive critique is based on preconception, ignorance and misunderstanding.

Read my comment on When Steel Talks .

An excerpt from the documentary “Come Down” about the first international Panyard in Europe organized 1994 by the Original Bernese Oil Company. The event took place in the Reithalle Bern.