Atelier Colla

The lively daily work; the connection to times and raw materials of an important and burdensome tradition; the hardships, the complications, the little skirmishes and the shared satisfactions: one of the most famous puppet companies in Italy, the Carlo Colla & Sons Company is quietly filmed empathically and respectfully from the wings and behind the scenes, to the studio-slash-workshop where each figure is assembled, each newcomer is trained and rehearsals are carried out, up to the stage of the Piccolo Teatro. The misunderstanding about this genre being nothing more than an amusement for young children is now more apparent and we unveil the fact that it is an art subject to a strict discipline that dominates the everyday life of a puppeteer. The makers of the film are a group of students from the Civic School of Milan who chose the angle of tailing and flanking that are never passively onlooking, and gives back reliving in its own way the harmony of the collective work that for over 200 years has been the real strength of the atelier.