Il principe porco
This documentary aims to take the viewer on an hour-long journey into a land, rife with contradictions, which has made the pig its prince. We will observe industrial farms and their free-range alternatives, industrial ham-making facilities and the oldest sausage-making plant in Europe, traditional slaughtering methods and modern slaughterhouses. We will tell the seasons of a pig's life-cycle: birth, growth and death, and how these are inextricabley entwined the seasons of Man. The documentary closes at a science lab in Bologna where pig organs are being genetically modified to be suitable for transplantation in to humans.
In the words of George Orwell, in the conclusion of his 1945 novel Animal Farm, "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." The allegorical image with which the author ends his book is mirrored this film whose protagonists are both pigs and men observed through the lens of comparative farming techniques. As Luciano puts it, between traditional and industrial methods, a new way is opening up with ramifications the world over which reflects an evolving culture, without giving up entirely on traditions.
project by Serena Savini
