Sardinia, the biggest island in the Mediterranean sea, still maintains many traditions from its ancestral past.  This reportage focuses on the isolated existence and pride of the Sardinian shepherds and the wild nature, primitive constructions ancestral rites of their island. One of this rites is the traditional Carnival of the Mamuthones, whose names may derive from Maimones (“the mad” or “the furious”). During the Carnival men and boys wear animal-like masks and cover themselves with animal skins and cowbells. They dance invoking the God Dionysius. 

This series of 24 television reports, each of 5 minutes, was commissioned by the Italian National Broadcaster (RAI) to showcase research activities conducted in national and international scientific institutions based in Trieste, the Italian city with the highest number of scientists per capita in Europe. The reports were included in a live studio program – Magazzino 26 – which covered topics such as climate change, sustainability, Big Data, the oceans, the universe, innovative medicine and science diplomacy. It was aired on RAI CULTURE to celebrate Trieste European Capital of Science 2020.

The research vessel OGS Explora is something of a legend in Trieste: it was the first public Italian vessel to conduct scientific research in Antarctica, the most extreme region of our planet where researchers can still find abundant information from the past that helps them to interpret the future.
Without satellite connection and sophisticated technological devices in the 1980s, those first scientific explorations lasted months and were incredibly adventurous. The most extreme part of our planet keeps well preserved an incredible amount of information about our past, that can help researchers to understand our future. Today, after almost 50 years of surveys around the world, Explora is an old elegant lady with many stories to tell. I spent one week on Explora, filming the research team and the professionals on board while using sophisticated instruments to analyze and map the ground under the sea during a campaigns for crustal seismic data acquisition in the Mediterranean.
From this idea were developed two research diaries filmed by the Explora’s researchers Andrea Caburlotto and Fabrizio Zgur : one in the Svalbard Islands (North Pole) and the other in Antarctica. This last diary was shot with 360 degrees cameras and edited as a virtual reality experience.