Mining Memories and Magical Mountains
– Elisabetta Masala –
The recent history of Sardinia is marked by disused mines, abandoned workers’ villages, and quarries carved into the rock like wounds. Mining events have shaped the landscape and communities, leaving behind a complex legacy made of labor, conflict, silence, and transformation—an imprint that still profoundly affects the identity of many regions, both on the island and across Italy.
It is also for this reason that MAN enthusiastically welcomed the proposal to acquire the multichannel installation La montagna magica by Micol Roubini into its permanent collection. A powerful, poetic, and rigorous project—made possible through the 11th edition of the Italian Council (2022)—that skillfully blends anthropological research and territorial investigation, industrial archaeology and contemporary visual languages.
The work begins with a study of the former asbestos mine of Balangero, in Piedmont, once the largest in Europe, active from 1918 to 1990 and currently undergoing remediation. The installation unfolds as a layered narrative composed of archival footage, oral testimonies, and field observation. It conveys the complexity of the post-industrial landscape, where nature slowly begins to reclaim space, yet the traces of the past remain etched in the land as well as in the lives of its inhabitants.
From this installation arose the need to continue the work and reprocess the rich repertoire of collected materials. Micol Roubini has thus succeeded in transforming the project into a 67-minute film of the same name, winner of the Premio per l’Innovazione Cinematografica at the Bellaria Film Festival 2025. The work deepens the investigation even further, intertwining dream and reality, observational cinema and poetic language, in an open dialogue between industrial heritage, environmental wounds, and the potential to write new stories.
For this reason, MAN wanted to present the film as a premiere in Sardinia, in collaboration with one of the island’s most significant cultural promoters: the literary festival of Gavoi, L’Isola delle Storie, which this year was held from July 3rd to 6th. A valuable opportunity to renew an already established collaboration and to bring the reflection on landscape and mining memory back into a territory that, although far from Balangero, shares the same reality of exploitation, abandonment, and a hoped-for rebirth.