Documentary, shot partially under water, about the female divers, the Ama, of the Japanese Nanatsu-to archipelago, devoted to fishing the awabi, valuable shellfishes living on the bottom of the sea. Part of Marani’s shoots were used without his knowledge for other documentaries in Italy and abroad, like Violated Paradise, produced and directed by the Russian Marion Gering in 1963. Gering’s imagines which make about the 90% of the originals, are edited in the succession again in 2005 by director Federico Jolli in charge of the Museum of Cultures in Lugano.

Fosco Maraini

The Italian ethnologist, photographer, film-maker, mountaineer, writer, poet and professor was born 1912 in Florence.He accompanied the noted Italian Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci on two expeditions to Tibet (1937 and 1948). He wrote dozens of books and articles (many of which have been translated into several languages), he had numerous photographic exhibitions in Europe and Japan. His work in Tibet and on the Ainu people of Hokkaido is of the utmost importance as historical documentation of two disappearing cultures. He died in Florence in 2004.