Staging Injustice Film Series: L'albero degli zoccoli

The second film in our Staging Injustice Film Series, L'albero degli zoccoli (The Tree of the Wooden Clogs, 1978) is directed by Ermanno Olmi and stars Luigi Ornaghi, Francesca Moriggi, and Omar Brignoli.

Synopsis (via Wikipedia): Four peasant families working farms for the same landlord scrape out a meagre existence in 1898 in the countryside around Bergamo. Over the course of a year, children are born, crops are planted, animals are slaughtered, couples are married, stories and prayers are exchanged in the families's shared farmhouse. When spring comes, the father from one of the four families cuts down a tree to make wooden clogs. 

Please note: the screening will begin at 5:30PM, with an introduction by Prof. Stefano Albertini (NYU). 

Stefano Albertini is a native of Bozzolo in the Northern Italian province of Mantua. He studied at the Università di Parma, where he majored in Political History. After obtaining his M.A. in Italian Literature from the University of Virginia he was admitted to Stanford University where he earned his Ph.D. with a dissertation on the rethoric of violence in Niccolò Machiavelli’s writings.
He has published extensively on topics ranging from Dante to Renaissance Literature, to Church/State relations during fascism.
Since 1994, he has been teaching literature and cinema in the Department of Italian Studies at New York University. He frequently contributes to Criterion Collection as an expert on Italian film, with interviews on Bellocchio, Matarazzo, Visconti, and Moonstruck. From 1995 to February 1998 he was Associate Director of Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò and since then he has served as Director.