Un western senza cavalli

The film tells the story of the personal and artistic adventures of the director-carpenter Mauro Mingardi, a craftsman of Bologna who works in his little workshop in Cyrenaica producing wooden models for the mechanical engineering industries of the area. Besides his work Mingardi had a great love of the cinema. For him it was not just a pastime; over a period of fifty years Mingardi authored more than forty full-length and short films, and won dozens of awards all over Europe in festivals dedicated to what was then known as “amateur film”. He has written, directed and produced westerns, crime stories, adventure films, horror films and grotesque comedies, dramatic and experimental films, transforming the area of Bologna and Emilia Romagna into a little Hollywood of the Po Valley, always filming without money, without professional pretensions, with the help of friends and relatives, but with an imagination, craftsmanship and technical-artistic expertise sufficient to make him one of the first (if not the very first) genuine Italian filmmakers.