Second wind (2018)

A documentary by Luca and Fabio Mina

Second Wind has the meaning of new strength, new energy. We have always lived with the wind, but it has always been unpredictable and surprising for us.

It’s an element present in myths and cosmologies from around the world, an inspiration for poets, painters and composers is the breath of life, a peace image, in which Elijah feels the divine presence telling him the danger ceased, but on the other side is a destructive force, represents the anger of ancient gods, it’s a natural disaster that we humans know, but not enough to be completely prepared to it.

The film is a journey in different places of Italy and shows how the wind can shape the landscape, be subject to environmental and engineering studies, influence our lives and our activities.
The various landmarks are accompanied by a soundtrack that comes from the sound of the place, of the wind itself and of the objects, the elements that its passage makes vibrate, originating harmonies, rhythms to create the music on; this music also takes from it its inspiration, following its evolution, its pace and contrasts.

These are the places, the people that Second Wind features:

– the group of researchers, experts, engineers of WinDyn in Genoa who studies how to erect buildings, bridges, the most various structures considering the wind, without looking at it as a simple obstacle, but as an element to relate with using knowledge, curiosity and imagination;
– Piscinas dunes in Sardinia, they are the highest sand dunes in Europe, a stretch of the Costa Verde where the wind shaped the landscape over the centuries keeping the freedom to change it, moving and heaping the sand;
– Trieste and the bora, a historical relationship between the inhabitants of the gulf and the gusts of this north-eastern wind; despite the damages and inconveniences, we can read a sort of affection and pride that binds the connect to the bora;
– Abruzzo and its wind farms, a mutated landscape, which tells how the man search and find, in communion with the wind, new solutions, not always without controversies;
– the lake Scaffaiolo, located in the Apennines between Emilia Romagna and Tuscany, a place between the crests of the mountains where a series of currents meet and let the wind inhabits this area every day of the year;
– an experienced sailor and his sailing boat, an ancient way to move and travel that works in communion with the wind; the first sails are born imitating the shape of bird wings.

Second Wind, this new energy is not only the one given by the wind to create clean energy, to build, with scientific knowledge, new cities and neighborhoods, is not only the inspiring force for artists and filmmakers, but it would like to be a new way for us to consider the wind, a possible new look, open to change, a new idea of man-nature relationship.

Here you can find a review of the documentary along with the presentation of the lp “High Wind may exists” by Fabio Mina (2017).