A man walks through more or less known places, wanders as if trying to tread on portions of unknown lands, never trodden before. He walks and observes the world passing before his eyes, trying to fix it, to freeze it in an ‘other’ space and time, on the celluloid of his old camera. This man is Kurt Diemberger, mountaineer and filmmaker of rerefined peaks and distant lands. He is 82 years old, he does not live in the past, but in the ‘now’, as if he were continually exploring the land that flows beneath his steps, through places dear to him, Austria, Italy, the Dolomites; as if he were continuing to investigate in that gaze of his ‘self’ that observes it. “Towards Where” recounts this journey not so much by asking Kurt for a direction, but rather by asking him about his perceptive state, about existing, in a present interpenetrated with contemporary and ancient gazes, with visions, which constitute his “now”, his past and his future.
Luca Bich, a native of Aosta who graduated from Bologna with a thesis on Jean Rouch, has directed ethnographic documentaries in various parts of the world, including a portrait of Kurt Diemberger. The film Verso dove achieved international success and distribution in France.