Last of Us

Andrea Marcovicchio | 28min

Postproduction Script

0’17”    45° 58’ 3.438” N           8° 39’ 11.731” E

0’31”    Directed by Andrea Marcovicchio

0’45”    Last of Us: The Last Fishermen of the Lake

0’57”    Lake Maggiore / North Italy

2’56” Giorgio Brovelli: I’ve been a fisherman for 61 years,

3’00”- 3’05” Giorgio Brovelli, fisherman

a real passion because my grandfather and father were also fishermen. It’s very exciting because it’s a job we can’t live without... As opposed to those who are forced to work 8 hours a day. For us, working all these hours at night doesn’t tire us out. Now we’re helped by electric winches, lighter nets, and less complicated techniques than in the past. Nowadays, unfortunately fishing has become less profitable, but you can live well because it’s the passion that helps us live well; even though the haul is less, the passion brings you out to fish everyday, and it always grows. At the end of the day you eke out a living anyway, and this is most important.

Once upon a time there were many fishermen, when I started 130 families made their living fishing, today we only have about 20 fishermen in the entire Lake Maggiore, a dramatic decline because no one wants to do this work for lack of passion and because no one passes this tradition down to the next generation... We’ll end at nothing, we’ll end as newcomers fish here in our place and that’s an unfortunate thing. Then it was much better fishing on the lake, because you could see a fishing boat everywhere, now to see a fishing boat you’d have to go miles without seeing a single one, and this is demoralizing... For me a lake without fishing and fishermen is no longer a lake.

5’52” Marco Rodella: I’m Marco Rodella, I’m part of the professional fishermen co-op of Lake Maggiore, living here in the Island of Fishermen. We’re the last 4, 3 brothers and a cousin. We are just a few.

6’03”- 6’09” Marco Rodella, Fisherman

6’31” Our typical day begins at sunset, when it becomes dark, when we place the nets. It’s possible to place the nets either close to home or far away. We fish the licensed “Borromeo area,” from Arona to Cannobio. The schedule depends on the fishing area, usually when it gets dark we drop the nets then we go back home to sleep. In fact, the real workday begins around 1:30 and 2:00 am, I wake up and take myself and the boat to the fishing area and we begin to collect the nets. Usually, we fish in pairs, my brother Vittorio and I always begin with pulling up the whitefish nets, which are fly nets, nets that we put down at night and they freely move with the current. Then you could arrive at the spot and find them right away or they could have moved 2-3 kilometers also. I started fishing as a child with my father and uncle but also with the older fishermen of the island. I started when I was very little, I remember that one day a man named Piero said: Marco tomorrow we’ll go out! And I said: But Piero tomorrow I go to school…! We really used to start young fishing with our fathers.

8’26” This one flashes green, flashes white, flashes green and white, flashes green,  flashes white, flashes green and white... so you know immediately that it’s different from the others. That one you can see very well but it’s slow, it’s so slow that you’re looking for it and don’t see it, then you turn back and bam! You see it! You can also see it well, but you have to locate it, once you’ve seen it you see it really well because it’s bright, but it’s very slow, and this is its characteristic.

9’14” The days were very different because we were still fishing in a more traditional way; in classic fishing you used to go out to put down the nets, then early in the morning, based on the season you’d go collect them, bring them to the wholesale fish market, and be almost done. Now instead, we fish differently: after the DDT crisis of ‘96 fishing changed especially for me and my brother. I’m going by memory because I don’t remember well, but in a week’s time we were told fishing would stop, I believe it was a Friday, and from that day we stopped fishing. It’s a bit complicated, because we stopped fishing our main fish, which is the whitefish. Just consider that we were more than ten fishing boats, and suddenly out of the blue we had to stop. Some fishermen just quit and never came back, while others continued fishing the only types now permitted, which were bass and trout.

11’12” – 11’16” Pietro Volta, Researcher, CNR Water Research Institute

In 1995, the neighboring Swiss found out the fish caught in Lake Maggiore had a level of DDT higher than the acceptable limit for human consumption, and therefore in 1996, I believe in July 1996, the Ministry of the Environment, in agreement with the Ministry of Health, and with the Lombardy and Piedmont Regions blocked fishing six fish species in Lake Maggiore, and these were the most important fish for professional fishermen, namely the whitefish: the Coregone Lavarello and Coregone Bondella, these are the two main species in the lake, the Agone and other minor species.

12’07” As a matter of fact this fishing prohibition caused a true collapse in the number of professional fishermen active on the lake, because try to figure out what it means to be denied to fish the species giving you 80% - 90% of your annual revenue, it has really been a disaster, as a consequence from about 150 fisherman active on Lake Maggiore during the first half of the 90s the number dropped drastically to 50 and as of today the number is about 35 fishermen, there is no newer generation replacement, the older fishermen stopped being fishermen, only the youngest of them remained, which in that period from 1995 to 2004 - 2005 they had to do other activities, because they could no longer fish the Coregoni and Agone, their income was reduced to zero, even though they received aid from the institutions that in some way compensated the lost earnings.

13’51” Marco Zacchera: Push down! Before the seagulls get here... come on! DDT broke the natural ecosystem, however the basic point is scientific, the lake risked becoming a ‘dead zone’,

14’08” – 14’14” Marco Zacchera, Italian commissioner for fishing in Italian-Swiss waters

the purifiers diminished the level of phosphorus in the water, therefore it diminished the phytoplankton and zooplankton, and as a consequence the fish that lived off of the zooplankton, the result? It was the collapse of production per hectare, but now it’s stabilized, actually, it is slightly improving, therefore we have some sort of guarantee that the lake will continue to produce a certain quantity of fish.

14’40” The problem in this quantity is that there are several invasive species, except for Lucioperca, and therefore not economically viable. Therefore if I caught 10Kg but 8Kg are worthless, it’s as if I only caught 2Kg, and this is dramatic! The most urgent thing to do is to expand our fishing, and then better market those types of fish not traditionally used, in particular Gardon and catfish in a good way. I know how beautiful it is to go out in the middle of the lake at 4 in the morning, if someone never tried it in life they probably wouldn’t understand. The Fisherman doesn’t always do rational things, and even as a professional doesn’t only think about profit, he also thinks about views, opportunities... If you bring home a big fish you get more satisfaction compared to the amount of money it brings in--because you brought home a fish! But the real deal is knowing you caught the right fish because you dropped the net in the right spot...

16’22”- 16’30” Ivan Spadoni, Former fisherman

I remember when I was a child I used to fish with my grandfather and uncles because in my family they were all fishermen. I remember in the morning, when returning from fishing, all the fishermen gathered on the shore, some sorted the fish, some reorganized the nets, reorganizing means taking out the “guazze” which is in dialect the “entanglement”  left by the fish in the nets when they’re removed. All the nets were reorganized and set daily in order to drop them once again in the evening... this is all gone.

17’14” There were older fishermen who even though no longer fished remained on the shore to adjust and fix their sons’ and nephews’ nets, it is a picture of the island that today no longer exists. Today there is no one who fixes the nets, maintains the boats in the fall when they were dry docked to be fixed, I miss this island, an island that unfortunately today we see only in photos... because nowadays all those places have been replaced by commercial activities. Finally all the old fishermen now died unfortunately they are no longer there and consequently the era of traditional fishing is over...

18’42” Alberto Rodi: My name is Alberto Rodi, I’m seventy-two years old,

18’51”- 18’56” Alberto Rodi, Fisherman

wait, almost seventy-three, therefore I’m the oldest fisherman who’s actually here on the lake. I’ve had this job since I was a child with my father and grandfather who were also fishermen, we also had the store... then the years of pollution came, when there was no longer fish and therefore I quit, and now I restarted ten years ago, the passion brought me back to resume this work that gratifies even though it requires a lot of sacrifice, especially when it’s windy, stormy, cold, and thundering. But it’s stronger than us, when there is passion everything else is secondary.

20’32” I am pessimistic, the fact is that aren’t any young fishermen left.

21’08” We are a farm established in this territory

21’14”- 21’18” Paolo Bazzoni, Fish farmer (LH). Stefano Chiodoni, Fish farmer (RH).

for twenty years that takes care of breeding fish in order to repopulate, we also offer environmental and fishing consulting, biological sampling, and various activities in the area of hydrobiology and freshwater ecology in general. We also serve the fishing associations, including the Canton Ticino territory mainly Sant’Andrea, with which we’ve had a relationship for many years. Every year we provide a big chunk of our trout production to the lake.

26’01” Marco Rodella: The most important thing for me is the sense of freedom, to be free as the nets, we call them fly nets because the nets are free to move with the lake’s current...