“Birthplace” is a short documentary film that tells the story of elders in a rural Italian village who cling to memories of the past and the deeper meaning of where they come from.
The documentary was filmed in Vacri, a village between the mountains of Abruzzo and the Adriatic Sea, by Francesco Paciocco, a filmmaker from New York whose father’s side of the family is from Vacri. “I would visit the town growing up and later on in adolescence, I would always marvel at the stories, people and places and said that someday I would make a film there,” he tells ITALY Magazine.
Vacri sits at the top of a hill overlooking the surrounding countryside and roughly 1,500 people inhabit its stony walls and sloping alleyways.
As explained on the film’s website, “What makes Vacri so interesting as the subject for ‘Birthplace’ is how wonderfully it serves as a microcosm for emigration and the search for personal identity. Vacri was traditionally a farming town of merchants and many of its inhabitants left the town between the end of the 19th century and today, going to places like Venezuela, Australia and the United States. As a result, across the world, there are pockets of Vacri’s inhabitants and their children (Vacresi) that still cling to their homeland and the memories of their past life.”
Watch the film:
