Sherry Millner, director & Ernest Larsen, scriptwriter
Sarita Matijevic Zilnik, producer (Playground produkcija, Serbia)
A seven to ten minute animation in the form of a modernized Italian folktale – based on the ongoing fight to halt the astonishing death-spiral of up to 21 million olive trees in Apulia (Southern Italy) still being strangled by the bacteria Xylella fastidiosa.
CONTENTS: In the Curse of the Spittlebug, we witness the defenseless olive trees, the unwary spittlebugs, even the evil Bacteria communicate directly with human beings. The Spittlebug can speak and the Olive Tree can moan–voices and imagery impossible in documentary and in realistic narrative. This metamorphic capacity profoundly dramatizes the clash among the visible and invisible forces of nature, including human nature, that produces the irruption/eruption of the ever-growing disaster, and makes the seemingly impossible not only possible but inevitable.
