Director: Gea Framarin, Production: Gea Framarin, Language: Franco-Provençal, Italy, 2021, 8×25′, Rights: World
Earth Women ( Donne di Terra) is a series that explores the lives of nine farmers living in Italian Valle d’Aosta who speak the Franco-Provençal language. These female farmers have chosen to live in the countryside in the most natural and eco-sustainable way possible. This all-female series leads to the discovery of various activities related to the land and the cycle of the seasons, where enterprising and innovative protagonists, far from chasing a dream, manage to sustain themselves economically. Each of these women has agreed to lend their faces to the ever-timeless and feminine archetype of Mother Earth.
Earth Women sketches the portrait of 9 women who at the dawn of the 21 century have chosen to farm the land; cultivation, breeding, foraging wild plants, and beekeeping. The director, rubbed shoulder to shoulder, with the farmers during the spring and summer in the Aosta Valley, telling their stories about their work on the land, but also in the transformation of products. In most episodes, we see a new recipe steeped in tradition but highly innovative.
We see their daily life, in this rural, ancient world which is modern at the same time. The series is narrated by Melanie Groux who is originally Waldensian but moved to Valle d’Aosta to live in a yurt with her 4 children.
About the Director
Gea Framarin is a video maker residing in the Aosta Valley. For several years she has been collaborating with the RAI Valle Aosta television as a local reporter. Earth Women is her most recent project exploring the new generation of growers scattered over the mountain area.