In the 1970s, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi began making films from early nitrate footage, reframing shots and keeping the scratches and damaged bits. In the 1980s, using found documentaries by Luca Comerio from the early 20th century, they manipulated thousands of images that the Italian government had allowed Comerio to shoot at the South Pole, in Africa, and at the front in World War I. The result is an elegiac look, in their specially devised slowed pace, at some dark moments of Italian history, including a hunt led by Mussolini’s secret political agent, and the plight of soldiers in 1914, that is a powerfully moving and aesthetically beautiful blend of artistic ambition and commentary/documentary.