The BEST episodes directed by Cosima Spender
#1 - The Toughest Horse Race in the World: Palio
Storyville - Season 2016 - Episode 4
The Palio is the oldest horse race in the world, and turns the Italian city of Siena into a high-stakes battleground of strategy, intrigue and simmering machismo. In the eye of the storm stand the jockeys - adored if they succeed, despised if they fail. This film follows the legendary maestro Gigi Bruschelli, winner of 13 races and master of the intrigues that surround the Palio, and his former protégé Giovanni Atzeni, a handsome young contender driven by a fearless passion to become number one. It exposes the notoriously closed world of this ancient race and the larger-than-life personalities of those involved in an epic and cinematic tale of Italian life in microcosm.
#2 - The Importance of Being Elegant
Storyville - Season 2004 - Episode 30
Set to the soundtrack of Papa Wemba's extraordinary music, this outrageous, funny and eye-opening film depicts the underground world of a flamboyant African cult. Nick Fraser (Editor) Papa Wemba is a well-known Congolese singer. He is also a big cheese in Le Sape, the Société des Ambianceurs et Persons Élégants, which translated into English means a society of people who spend huge amounts of money on designer clothes with the motive of making themselves as conspicuously elegant as possible. The film is a splendid evocation of Papa Wemba's music, but it is also an unusual insight into what it means to be an immigrant in contemporary Europe. The sapeur have borrowed from our own culture, creating something rich and strange and wholly Congolese. Don't miss the scene where they try on fur coats.
#3 - Who Is Gorky? An Abstract Life
Storyville - Season 2012 - Episode 10
In a personal journey into a family tragedy, filmmaker Cosima Spender explores how she and her relatives have been shaped by her grandfather - the pioneering Abstract Expressionist painter, Arshile Gorky. Following a series of tragedies, he committed suicide in 1948, leaving a young wife and two daughters behind. Through conversations with her grandmother, Gorky's widow, Spender tries to make sense of his creativity, the reasons for his death and the shadow it subsequently cast. The film takes the viewer through the pain and courage of the family, coming to an emotional climax in Gorky's Armenian birthplace.
#4 - Dolce Vita Africana
Storyville - Season 2008 - Episode 10
Documentary about Malian photographer Malick Sidibe, whose images captured the spirit of his generation asserting their freedom after independence.