Stessa spiaggia stesso mare

How was the Romagna Riviera before the peaceful invasion of hordes of northern European tourists? How was the myth of that piece of the Italian coastline born? of its nights, its ‘vitelloni’? From social and cultural standpoints, what did foreign mass tourism mean during the years of the Italian economic boom and its contradictions? These are the central questions of the documentary. Guido Chiesa choose to investigate that special ‘melting pot’ Romagna-style that happened in the Riviera from the Post War World Two period onward, due to the onslaught of German, British and Scandinavian tourists, attracted by the myth of sunny, sensual, and terribly ‘Latin’ Italy. The encounter North-South, blond-dark, flirtatious-uninhibited, has created families, opened restaurants, hotels, bed&breakfasts, put the wings on the local economy. But, most of all, it was an encounter that gave birth to a collective imaginary which is still in existence today, fuelled by near epic tales and by film comedies that enthusiastically exalted this myth. With a light ironical touch, Chiesa revisits those years through the recollections of the protagonists and a variety of archive documentary material; the narration is enhanced by the presence of that past, by the images of the today’s Riviera, by the words of the protagonists of those years.
The film was made with the support of the Emilia-Romagna Region and the Province of Rimini for History Channel Italia.