Get Together for Christmas - 50 Years Later
2015 - 56 mins (HD)

By Alberto Engeli and Mattia Bertoldi
Concept, camera, editing, colorist: Alberto Engeli
Writer: Mattia Bertoldi

Emigration has always played a particular importance in the program schedule for the Italian-speaking Swiss Broadcasting. In the sixties and seventies, for example, the SwissTV-RSI aired eleven editions of the television program "Get Together for Christmas", which offered a look into the lives of Swiss Italian's emigrants and rejoined them (across the screen) to their loved ones who remained in the homeland.

A popular format and cutting edge that remained in the people's memories thanks to the images and narration of the trio Dario Bertoni, Sergio Locatelli and Enzo Regusci, whom every year were visiting a different region of the world to meet the protagonists of our diaspora.

The Christmas spirit, the large number of stories full of determination and affection as well as the telecast of footage shot at the four corners of the globe between 1963 and 1974 - from South America to Asia, passing through North America - have brought the program to settle in the heart of thousands of Swiss Italian viewers. Among them was Alberto Engeli who was able to turn these memories into a project aimed at providing new luster to the stories of those who were interviewed half a century ago.

In 1965 Bertoni, Locatelli and Regusci moved to California to meet the Ticinesi emigrants that came down there to work on ranches and dairies; in 2015, exactly 50 years later, a new crew got on trail of the descendants of the people interviewed at that time, to see how the families of Swiss-Italian that settled there have evolved in the western United States. This was the formula behind "Get Together for Christmas - 50 Years Later", a series of four 14 minutes long documentaries each and overseen by Alberto Engeli, in collaboration with the coordinator of "OltreconfiniTi", the platform for those seeking information on emigration from Ticino, Mattia Bertoldi.

"Get Together for Christmas - 50 years later" is a 2500 mile trip from suburban Los Angeles to the Mendocino County (three-hour drive north from San Francisco), which allowed the two to meet a hundred heirs of the diaspora Ticinese, focusing however on eight families. Eight families that you will see in this unique film, with the 4 episodes edited one after the other, in order to bring out the best narrative story of the trip, also made with good music and fabulous pictures, and which among other things each day, they have achieved the best TV share.

For those interested to watch the Italian version of the 4 episodes aired on Swiss TV on December 23, 24, 28 and 29 - 2015, and evoked in this article of the chief editor of the show "Il Quotidiano" Massimiliano Herber, here the links.

Per chi fosse interessato alla versione italiana dei 4 episodi trasmessi dalla Tv Svizzera RSI il 23, il 24, il 28 e il 29 dicembre 2015 e rievocati in questo articolo del responsabile del "Quotidiano" Massimilliano Herber, eccovi i links.

episodio 1 - gli Agadoni da Gnosca e i Borla da Medeglia

episodio 2 - i Mattioli di Bellinzona e i Camozzi di Bogno

episodio 3 - i Moresi di Certara e i Canonica di Treggia

episodio 4 - i Moretti di Maggia e gli Stornetta di Sant'Antonino