Theo Michael

“I Giganti”

Italy 1958. Reggio Calabria. A small town where everyone knows everyone. Three local young men come out of a FIAT 1100 cabrio car and sit at the coffee shop in front of the beach . Their coffees have a lot of foam and colorful straws. Chatting and exchanging keyrings, seems they are having fun. They notice two tall and athletic males who are having goat milk at another table. These men look as if out of scale, really large and very serious, they use a lot of hand gestures too. They are tanned and sharply dressed, they wear shirts and sunglasses, they have beards and long hair too. The 3 young men are curious, who are the tall men and what are they planning? Next day the young men are on the beach, chatting about football and exchanging newspapers. All in Italian. Out of the sea emerge the two mysterious men from the day before. They are wearing linen swimsuits, their bodies radiate heat. The three young men a few meters away are captivated, they seem to be devising a plan to go and talk to them. One of them approaches the two men and asks them if they would like to join them for a ball game. The two men politely answer in impeccable Ancient Greek. (No subtitles). The young lad leaves slightly baffled and kinda disappointed tells his friends that the men are not Italian... They all seem a bit deflated if not intimidated. The giant men are drawing with a pencil on a sketch pad... they then both spend some time staring towards the void...they suddenly get up and leave in a rush... they drive off in a shiny grey Ferrari 250 Zagato. No one has ever shown up in such a car in Reggio...The young men on the beach notice that they have left behind them their leather coated sketch pad... they pick it up in order to give it back to them if they see them again...They look at the sketch pad and see complex mechanical drawings of something that resembles the Antikethyra mechanism. Other pages seem to have axonometric drawings of Tririmes and other technical details... the young men seem weirded out...the sketch pad seems to smell of goat too...

“Who are these guys...!?” «chi sono questi ragazzi??”

At night the three young men are eating at a restaurant by the beach. A tow truck passes by, carrying the red Ferrari, all mangled up. The young men look at each other worried... but continue their meal... The next day one of the three young men brings a local newspaper on the table of the cafeteria, the headline says: “Mystery of unoccupied Ferrari found in the waters off Riace”.

Cut to 1972. Underwater shots. A diver spots something at the bottom of the sea while scuba diving. Cut to Archaeologists gathered on the beach as two bronze sculptures are brought out of the sea. They are the “Bronze di Riace”. Cut to the young men, now all grown up with babies in strollers and their wives entering the archaeological museum of Reggio Calabria. In the main hall the two life size bronze sculptures are standing as if gazing at eternity. Extensive close ups of the sculptures. The families are chatting and laughing while looking at the sculptures... they keep strolling...

THE END